by W. J. Stuart
When he’d finished with me I could hardly breathe. “Grab them hand-holds now,” he said. “Grip like you was tryin’ to bend ‘em.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out two little things I couldn’t identify. “These’ll help some,” he said and bent over me and inserted one of them into each of my ears. He looked down at me for a second—and suddenly grinned.
Then he was gone. A few minutes or years or seconds later I heard—faintly because of the ear plugs—the whistle of the communicator. Three blasts this time—with no voice to follow them . . .
There was a lull—and then the Jag began . . .
The first step was a violent, somehow convulsive shuddering which shook the whole fabric of the ship until the thought stabbed through my mind that something was wrong, that some part of the infinitely intricate machine had failed.
Against the cruel tightness of the straps my body was forced forward until I thought the plastic would sink deep into my flesh.
Then came the Noise. In spite of the earplugs it seemed to go right through my head like a white-hot scalpel. A sort of apotheosis of sound, which came from tortured metal strained to the very limit of its endurance.
Then everything—the Noise and the shuddering vibration and the cutting of the straps—it all seemed to merge together and be inside me. I felt as if my whole being—and I mean more than my body—were fighting against a force determined on my utter disintegration . . .
Then—nothingness . . . Until I came back together and felt hands working on the straps around my legs.
It was the Bosun. He was standing normally, and I knew the A.G.F. was on again. As he undid the body straps, I managed to croak some words at him. He probably couldn’t make them out, but he knew what I was trying to say.
He said, “You can quit worryin’, Doc. We’re through—everything’s all terrashape . . .”
IV
It wasn’t long before I’d stripped off my sodden clothes and put on a fresh uniform and made my way to the Mess. Except for a headache, and a weak feeling around my knees, I felt pretty good. But I needed a drink—badly.
I wasn’t the only one, because Farman was there, halfway through a powerful concoction he always called a Spacehound Special. My heart sank when I saw him; I didn’t feel like being ribbed.
But I needn’t have worried. For once, it seemed, Jerry Farman didn’t feel like pulling legs. He said, “Hi, Doc,” and raised his glass. And then he said, “That was one tough Jag, all right!” He pulled out his cheeks. “Thought I was never coming together again.”
That made me feel better. I said, “So did I,” and mixed myself a drink and drained half of it at one gulp. “My legs are the worst,” I said. “They don’t feel right, somehow.”
Farman said, “That’s not you, Doc. That’s the ship. It’s the difference in speed.” He emptied his glass and set it down and started out. But he checked at the door and turned. He said, “Like to come up in the Control Area? Quite a thrill to look in the big peeper now.”
I grabbed at the opportunity eagerly, so eagerly that I left half my drink untasted and in less than a minute was following Farman along to the Control Area. Adams was in the pilot’s chair, but his eyes were on the eight-foot screen of the big viewer. He didn’t move when we came in, but Quinn saw us and jumped up. He said, “Ah!” and licked his lips thirstily. He looked at me and said, “Sit in my place if you like, Doctor,” and brushed past me and was gone.
Adams spoke to Farman, still without looking around. He said, “Give me a fix, Jerry, Right away.”
“Check,” said Farman and slid into his seat in front of the huge astro-globe swinging gently in its transparent case. Quinn’s chair was a little apart from the Pilot’s and the Astrogator’s, beside the two banks of computers. I slipped into it and swung it round and looked across at the screen of the viewer.
And let out a startled exclamation. Gone was all that sensation of being stationary in a moving Cosmos. Now—I could feel it!—the ship was moving, heading like an arrow toward one single blazing star that hung in the blackness ahead . . .
Altair—an impossible, blazing jewel hung on an impossible curtain of the blackest impossible velvet . . .
V
Hours later—about 1800 by our time—I was in the Control Area once more. I’d been in the Surgery, fixing for the mandatory pre-arrival check-up, but I’d sneaked back as soon as I could, to find Quinn had gone to the Relay chamber. So I slid into his chair again . . .
And saw something which made my first view of Altair, which had so impressed me, seem almost insignificant. When I first sat down, the only difference I could see was that the jewel-like star was nearer and therefore larger—but presently, as I watched, other and smaller jewels began to thrust through the black velvet all around the great central stone. And each jewel seemed to my fascinated eyes to be a different color.
They were stars—and it was like watching them being born. The fact that I knew they were other, farther away members of a constellation which had been existing since the beginning of Time made no difference to the exquisite sensation of watching them, for me, come into being . . .
I don’t know how long I sat there, fascinated, but at last Quinn came back and they almost dragged me out of the chair—and Adams and I left the Control room and had some sort of a meal, after which I went to bed.
But not to sleep. Adams had told me that by our morning we’d be in sight of the Altair planets, and I was too excited to do much more than doze sporadically.
During the last of the dozes, I was brought wide awake by a shrill whistle from the communicator, and then Adams’ voice calling all hands to General Assembly.
I pulled on clothes and hurried along to the men’s mess, where all Assemblies were held. I took my place in the front row, with Farman and Quinn. Behind us were the Bosun and the two non-coms. Behind them were the rest of the crew. There were twenty of us. John Adams wasn’t there yet, in accordance with the unwritten protocol which seems to provide that Commanders must always keep everybody waiting.
I looked around, and thought for the thousandth time how young all the faces were. Young, that is, in flesh and coloring, in cellular tissue. But in another way, not young at all but tough and weathered by experience. From this, I got onto my old line of thought about the new breed these children constituted.
Then Adams arrived. He stood at the end of the mess room and looked us over. He was saturnine and controlled as ever, and it occurred to me that he was even more representative of the new breed than any of the others. Perhaps this was because he seemed somehow, in spite of his very definite good looks, sort of ageless, with more self-recognized force and control than his twenty-seven years or so could conceivably have given him in any other walk of life.
“You all know why you’re here,” he said at last. “To be told, in accordance with Standing Orders, what this trip’s about. Personally, I think this way of not telling a crew what a mission’s about until they’ve reached the objective—well, I think it’s damn silly. Outdated as rocket propulsion. I think you ought to’ve been told, not only where we are going, but why.” One of his rare smiles came here. “But if any of you space-bugs quotes me, I’ll have him on Charge for maligning an officer.”
There was a ripple of laughter, and he went on, “We’re headed for the fourth planet of Altair, as you all know. If Lt. Farman’s as good an Astrogator as he says he is—” another laugh—“we ought to be settling down in twenty-four hours.” He paused a moment. “We don’t know anything about this planet. We are on Reconn. Object: to find out what’s happened to Exploratory Mission Eighty-three. This mission left Earth Base twenty years ago, Earth time. The ship was the E-X Craft 101, Bellerophon. She carried the usual mixed crew of scientists, technicians and guards. The expedition was the first to the constellation Alpha Aquilae.”
He ran his eye over us again. “Nobody knows what’s happened to Bellerophon. Or the expedition. We don’t even know if they landed on Altair-4 at all. T
his is because any form of radio communication over this distance is damn near impossible even today, and the Bellerophon’s equipment was twenty years older than ours . . .
“So there you are: our job’s to find out if the Bellerophon made it, and if she did, what’s happened to the crew. Don’t forget the time-squeeze: if they survived, we’re in for an interesting visit. Because they’ll have spent twenty years on a planet man’s never touched before . . .”
And that was all. He dismissed the Assembly and hurried back to the Control room, taking Farman with him. He was noted among the crew, especially the older hands like my friend the Bosun, for hating to leave his ship under unsupervised Automatic Control. They liked it. To them it was the mark of a really good Commander.
As I made for the door, I found Quinn beside me. I liked Alonzo Quinn, in spite of his precise, rather old-maidish manner—which, I was beginning to believe, derived mainly from his profession. After all, a Devisor has to be a fuss-budget to do his job properly.
I said, “I suppose it’s different for you old hands, but for me this is all pretty exciting.”
He studied me through his large glasses. “Eminently understandable, Doctor.”
“I don’t see much sleep for me tonight,” I said. “Too many things to wonder about.”
“May I strongly advise against ‘wondering’,” said Alonzo Quinn. “The more mental forecasts you make, the greater the shocks you’re likely to get . . .”
VI
Adams’ prediction that twenty-four hours would see the end of our journey looked like being a hundred per cent correct. Because some time in the small hours I was waked from a thin sleep by the whistle of the communicator—and then, oddly, Farman’s voice. It said:
“Hear this: Lieutenant Farman speaking for the Commander. Our objective, Altair-4, is in sight. All hands not on duty—repeat, not on duty may use the deck-2 viewers. The planet and satellites are visible on the port side. That is all.”
I was out of bed and across to my viewer in one jump. I flipped the switch—and waited impatiently while it clouded, glowed—and cleared . . .
Strangely, my first reaction was one of disappointment. It looked so small, hanging there like some Christmas decoration right in the middle of my screen. And there was nothing strange (God knows what pictures my mind had been conjuring up!) about its shape. Except that its general contour was a little more squeezed at the ends, a little more ovate, it looked pretty much like Earth.
But then I began to realize how beautiful it was. And strange, too, with its atmosphere spreading a turquoise-shimmering halo; with its two small greenish moons whose tint was like no tint I’d ever seen before . . .
I must have stood there for an hour, watching while our speed brought the planet closer and closer, swelling it until it filled the viewer completely . . .
I was brought to myself by a visit from the Bosun. “ ‘Mornin’, Doc,” he said. “Commander’s compliments—and if you’d like to go up to Control you’re welcome.” He grinned at me as I jumped for my clothes. “Gettin’ quite a jet outa this, huh, Doc?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I pulled on my blouse and buttoned it feverishly. “If you want to know what I think, this blase attitude you Spacehogs cultivate’s just a pose.”
He looked at me, his grin fading. “Could be,” he said. “Maybe we had too much experience. Maybe we cover up because we’re scared.”
There was something about his tone, and I looked up quickly from putting on my shoes. But all I saw was his back as he went out the door . . .
Up in Control, I found Adams and Farman and Quinn all at their places. But the big viewer was blank. I didn’t understand why it had been switched off until Adams pulled the communicator mike toward him and said into it, “Hear this: Commander to Crew. We are about to enter the F.I. of our objective. All hands to D.C. Stations. All hands to D.C. Stations. That is all.”
I understood then. We were about to go through what they called a second-grade deceleration as we pierced the envelope of the planet’s atmosphere. I didn’t mind. I’d had this in training; it wasn’t anything like a Jag. Farman and Quinn went over to the row of huge D.C. lamps at the edge of the area, and I followed with Adams close behind me. I crossed to my station at the end of the row and stepped up onto the platform under the lamp. The others stood on their platforms, Adams last.
Almost immediately the ship shuddered, the lights flickered and then dimmed, and the ship’s bell began to count in measured beeps. Simultaneously, the odd varicolored Omega rays from the lamps above our heads poured down over us. I had a numb, powerless feeling all over, and began to feel sick at my stomach.
The bell stopped. The lights went up, and the D.C. lamps cut themselves off automatically. I stepped down from my platform. My neck was stiff, and I still felt a little queasy. But that was all. I said, “I wish they’d get those lamps up to a point where they’d look after a Jag,” but no-one paid any attention. Adams and Farman were already back in their seats, and Quinn brushed past me to go to an apparatus I remembered was the short distance radio control.
Then someone must have switched on the viewer again—because the screen glowed and flickered, warming up.
And suddenly Altair-4 filled the screen like a huge relief map, one whole hemisphere bathed in the light of its sun-star, Altair. The light was still the strange blue-green, as if it had been filtered through a turquoise screen, and it had an astonishing quality of clarity . . .
I was fascinated, my whole consciousness seemed to be in my eyes, so that all my mind could do was receive impressions. It was like being under hypnosis, and I’ve no idea at all how long it lasted.
When I did start thinking again, the first thought was a surprised one. Because of the increasing likeness of the planet to Earth. Here was no grey-white, crater-pitted Lunar waste; no red, canal-scarred Martian monotony. Here were plains and oceans, rivers and mountain ranges—and no single overriding coloration but every imaginable—and some unimaginable—shade, and gradation of shade . . .
I suddenly wanted to talk about it. To somebody, anybody. I looked away from the screen for the first time, and at once was aware of tension, Nobody had moved, nobody seemed to be doing anything, but there was an atmosphere of strain which was almost tangible.
Adams spoke suddenly, and I almost jumped out of my skin. He said, “Still nothing, Lon?” and Quinn shook his head without looking around. I saw he had on his head an oddly-shaped pair of earphones. He said, “Nothing, Skipper. I thought there was a moment or so back, but it was only static.” I could see the frown behind his spectacles. “Peculiar static—but static nevertheless . . .”
Farman looked up. “Going to take a whirl at the other hemisphere, Skipper?”
“Why the hurry?” Adams was curt. He looked at Quinn again. “Keep at it, Lon,” he said, and turned back to his Pilot controls.
I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. Here I’d been in a trance of excitement over my own sensations, while all the time the others were thinking about the men we’d come to find.
Now I couldn’t think of anything else, and only darted occasional glances at the screen to see what Adams was doing with the ship. He seemed to be coming down, very slowly, and coursing in wide spirals at the same time . . .
Half an hour went by, maybe an hour. And still we had no success. Quinn’s frown was deeper, Adams’ mouth a grim line. Even Farman looked worn and harassed. Once I thought we had something. They had switched on the big speaker now, over the Pilot’s chair—and, suddenly, sounds had come out of it. Strange sounds. They were like—well, like nothing in my experience.
But Quinn said they were static—and he was the expert. He had to be right . . .
The time dragged on. The spirals brought us lower, but very slowly. At a word from Adams, Farman slipped on a pair of the new I.M. goggles, and stood up close to the viewer screen, studying it.
“Not a sign of mass habitation, Skipper. Not a city, not a bridge, not a dam.” His scho
olboy grin came back for a moment. “Not a damn thing, in fact.” The grin faded. “I could be missing isolated structures, but they’d have to be pretty small.”
Adams growled, “Keep looking.” I think he was going to say more, but he didn’t get the chance. Because Quinn cut in, sharply:
“Skipper—Skipper! We’re being radar-scanned. Sequence K!”
From the big speaker came a sudden raucous cackling, and Quinn’s whole body tensed as he shot out a hand to one of the dials and adjusted it with feverish caution.
The cackling stopped—and a resonant, metallic voice came from the big speaker.
“. . . being scanned . . .” it said.
It was like an impossible echo of Quinn, and it brought me out of my seat. I stared up at the mouth of the speaker. Adams and Farman were staring too. Quinn said something—but none of us heard him as the voice came again.
It was slow and low and measured. It said, “Space Ship, identify yourself. You are being scanned . . . Space Ship, identify yourself. You are being scanned . . .”
Adams grabbed for his microphone. “This is United Planets Cruiser C-57-D, John Adams Commander. Who are you?”
There was a pause, a long one. And there was a subtle change in the metallic voice when it spoke. As if its words came reluctantly:
“This is Morbius speaking.”
Farman set down an open paper on the ledge in front of Adams’ chair.
Adams glanced at the paper. “Edward Morbius?” he said. “Of the Bellerophon?”
“That is correct,” came the voice—and said nothing more.
Adams and Farman exchanged a glance. They were as puzzled as I was. The man’s reaction to this first contact with Earth in what must have been, for him, a couple of decades, seemed all wrong.
Adams said, “It’s good to know the Bellerophon made it, Doctor Morbius.” He was trying to hit the proper note.
There was another pause. And then, “Do you contemplate a landing, Commander?” Now there was no mistaking the coldness in the voice.