by James White
‘Weightlessness,’ said Carson, his centres of curiosity temporarily paralysed by the implications. He was going to be a space-going guinea-pig ...
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Jean suddenly, waving at the control centre and the launching complex beyond, ‘is how you keep this a secret. And what about the expense?’
Carson heard Daniels’s answer although he was not really listening to it. There was something about an agreement made during his original presentation to the top man. In addition to the highly unusual security arrangements the project was to have unlimited funds which would be made available from the defence budget by an extremely circuitous route. As for keeping the control centre and launching pad secret, there was no need to. Space-travel these days was nothing to get excited about so far as the public were concerned. The only times that the press and TV people took an interest was when something unusually ambitious was being planned or someone got himself killed. There were so many different chunks of hardware being heaved into orbit these days, from communications and weather satellites to the bewildering variety of instrument and biological research packages sent up by the universities trying to satisfy their respective and highly specialised curiosity, that nobody was really interested.
There was so much going on all the time that eavesdropping was not worth the effort--it would be like trying to listen in and isolate all the conversations going on in the main concourse of a busy railway or air terminal. By taking a few simple precautions they could communicate with their vehicles with an infinitesimal risk of being overheard...
‘... And in any case,’ Daniels ended, ‘so far as outsiders are concerned, our vehicles are not manned.’
‘Training,’ said Carson suddenly. ‘I can fly .a light aircraft, after a fashion--but an astronaut has years of training to ... ‘
‘It wouldn’t matter,’ said Daniels, ‘if you were a junior assistant in a shoe store--except that flying training should keep you from becoming too disorientated and perhaps panicking. You will not be required to do anything. You won’t be allowed to do anything but sit there...’
‘There’ll be a window?’
‘You may look out the window as often as you like,’ said Daniels. ‘We don’t want to take away all the fun … ‘
As he stared into the chief designer’s eyes Carson wondered why he did not simply grab Jean by the hand and light out of there. They could forget the project and Pebbles and the threat to the peace of the world--there was always a threat to the peace of the world, if not with confrontations or escalations of heightenings of tension then in some other fashion. They could lose themselves in a city somewhere so that the lonely Donovan could not find them, and just live with the threat the way everyone else in the world had been doing since Hiroshima.
The trouble was that he did not want out of it, and the reasons for not wanting out were not the result of patriotic feeling, concern for mankind or even concern for his own precious skin--they were simply stupid!
For the chance of looking out of a window, which might very well get steamed up anyway, he was going to risk his life. Daniels had been right. He was not being motivated by intelligent self-interest, and Carson felt terribly confused and angry with himself.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ said Daniels, who had been watching him closely, and apparently reading his mind, ‘Tillotson and Pebbles felt the same way...’
Chapter Nineteen
Three days later they were able to talk to Pebbles from the control centre. His voice sounded strange but this was not, the communications man assured them, due to distortion of the signal. It was plain to all of them that Pebbles was very seriously disturbed about something.
‘If we say and do what we’re supposed to,’ said Jean, looking at Carson, ‘I don’t know how he will react. Out there he might do something which would wreck the capsule.’
Carson looked at Daniels who shook his head and said, ‘He has no control. But if it is possible to break his conditioning without going to the extent of making him a raving lunatic, to the point where we can find out how much the people who placed him know or suspect about the project, I would like you to try.’
It would have made the job much easier if Jean and himself could have seen Pebbles. But the camera, like all the other recording equipment in the capsule, would transmit only a few minutes before the start of the minus trip home, that instantaneous journey which occurred when Pebbles pushed the red button--or rather, Carson hastily corrected himself, when Control pushed it for him.
‘Take it easy, John,’ said Carson. ‘What’s troubling you? The dreams again?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can talk freely, John,’ Carson said as the silence began to drag. ‘Jean and I have joined the project, too, and we’ve told Mr Daniels about your mental ... confusion. He understands. You can talk about the dreams.’
‘I’m still afraid to go to sleep. And Joe, I dream them even when I’m awake ...’
‘Go on. I haven’t much time to talk to you. John?’ There was no answer.
At a time like this he should be able to do more than talk, Carson told himself, and much more than listen. He should be able to offer a cigarette, give the other’s arm a reassuring shake and vary the tone of voice to suit the man’s reactions. He should at least be able to see Pebbles’s expression. But the screens in the control centre showed only views of a rocket being readied for launching with the information that the countdown was at one hour and twenty minutes.
‘John, listen to me!’ he said urgently. ‘We have been thinking about you very seriously and we have come up with a pretty good theory. We no longer think that you were retarded--we believe that you represent a simple, if rather drastic, case of amnesia which is beginning to pass. That would explain the confused dreams and the speed you have learned--or rather, relearned--things recently.’
‘You see,’ he went on, ‘the best way to cure amnesia is to surround the patient with familiar objects, places and people. You, over the past few years, have gradually surrounded yourself with familiar objects, situations and, in a manner of speaking, places--but your cure is still not complete because the familiar faces were absent as well as the voices of your friends ...’
There was still no response. Daniels was staring intently at Carson and so was Jean. Her expression warned him that if he wasn’t careful he would say or do something which would make them both ashamed of him.
But I like Pebbles, he raged at her silently, and aloud went on, ‘To be able to pick up things as quickly as you did, especially in a highly technical area like this one, you had to have prior knowledge and training. Nobody learns to fly as quickly as you did! ‘
‘We can only believe that all this was familiar ground to you, John,’ Carson continued, ‘and that you have done something very like it before. But something happened--some kind of accident, perhaps, although we know that it did not involve physical injury--and you forgot everything. But now we want you to remember. Try hard, John. We think you may already have been a member of a project very like this one. Try, please, to remember what happened and everything you possibly can about it, because if you do you can help yourself a lot. You can help us, too. And me, John. You can help make it safer for both of us because I’m going out there, too ...’
‘You? Joe, is it a ... a minus trip?’
‘So they tell me,’ said Carson, laughing, ‘but that is all they’ll tell me. I only want to look at the view.’
‘It’s worth seeing, Joe. Even though I think ... No, I’m sure that I’ve seen it before ...’
‘That’s it! Keep trying to remember. You were involved with a project like this one before your ... accident. We’re pretty sure of that. Try to bring it back. Your memories could help us, keep us from making mistakes, perhaps. We’re your friends ...’
‘My other friends killed me! Do you hear that? They didn’t want to and ... and they didn’t know they were going to do it, but ... but they killed me, obliterated me, wi
ped me out! In the dreams it is always going to happen and it did. They didn’t know about it and I can’t remember it happening but it must have--no, it did happen!’
‘Now you are going to kill me, too.’
‘But John,’ Jean said gently, ‘you are still alive ...’
‘We won’t kill you,’ Daniels broke in fiercely. ‘You’ll be safe, as safe as anyone could be in these circumstances. Wayne Tillotson died because he lost control of himself and his ship. You do not have control so you cannot...’ Daniels broke off. The voice pouring out of the speaker did not sound quite sane and the project chief knew that he was wasting his breath. Carson looked across at Jean, wondering if this was the proper time to detonate their psychological bomb, but the way her fingers gripped the tape spool gave him her answer. Daniels reduced the volume to a whisper and turned to them.
‘Get out of here, you two,’ he said harshly. ‘Doctor, you can listen and talk to Pebbles from my office. Joe, you can do the same--and talk to me, if you have to--from the gantry. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave, now ...! ‘
‘But Pebbles isn’t due to push the button until early tomorrow...’ began Carson, then shrugged. They were most decidedly not wanted in the control centre just now, and curiosity over the reason why was eating at him like a duodenal ulcer, but he knew better than to waste his breath asking questions.
But he had been able to catch a few words here and there from the men who were beginning to fill the room, enough to know that they were setting up for a re-entry. But who else, beside Pebbles, was out there?
On the way out to the gantry curiosity got the better of him, but he could get nothing from Reece or Parsons except reassuring smiles--not, that was, until they walked past the door labelled Dressing Room and into the lift. Then he asked a question which, so far as he was concerned, demanded an answer.
‘What about my spacesuit?’
‘You don’t wear one,’ said George Reece. ‘This will be a purely shirtsleeve exercise all the way. Besides, this way it is easy to make people believe that we are sending up an instrument or biological research package--they don’t really notice or make a count of the comings and goings of people in sweaters and slacks if their IDs are in order. But if you were dressed in a spacesuit they would certainly notice that. Does the thought of not having one bother you, Joe?’
Not as much as the thought of Donovan, Carson replied silently, then aloud, ‘How long will the trip last?’
They did not answer that one. Carson began to lose his temper.
‘Both of you travelled here with me,’ he said sharply. ‘You heard me trying to question Daniels, you heard him tell me that I could have full information on effects but nothing on causes. Play fair.’
‘A day or maybe less, Joe,’ said Parsons. ‘It all depends.’
‘On what?’
‘We can’t tell you,’ said Reece, ‘without discussing causes.’
‘Look,’ said Carson patiently, ‘I got into this mess because I have already found out a lot about the project. For instance, I’m pretty sure that neither Pebbles nor myself are going into a six-or seven-day orbiting session. Where am I going exactly?’
‘To a point in space more than half-way to the orbit of Mars and three million miles or so below the orbit of Earth and angled towards the present position of Jupiter. Now are you happy?’
‘What do I find there?’
‘Nothing at the moment...’ began Parsons, and stopped suddenly because Reece was glaring at him.
‘So I’m going to rendezvous with someone, or something?’
‘You could say that.’
Before Carson could devise another question the lift reached capsule level and he was hustled politely out. Reece opened the large canvas bag labelled Waste that he had been carrying and produced a set of one-piece coveralls with zips at strategic positions and a pair of light, rubber-soled boots. The maker’s labels had been removed from everything. While Carson stripped and changed, the clothing in which he had arrived was rolled up and rammed tightly into the canvas bag.
‘We’ll have them cleaned and pressed for you by the time you get back,’ said Parsons, then added, ‘You know where everything is and how to use it. Any questions?’
‘Are you kidding...?’
But Carson was not, at that moment, thinking of questions. Instead he was staring at the capsule which projected through the hole in the centre of the floor with its hatch open. He noticed, but did not seem to want to think about the fact that there was no escape tower--an ‘unmanned’ capsule would not have one, of course. He kept thinking how familiar it was, remembering the times he had wriggled into one just like it in engineering Test for a twenty-minute daydream of being in orbit. He thought that the butterflies indigenous to his stomach had grown to the size of blackbirds and he felt overwhelmed by an intense and fearful anticipation with, he thought, the fear just slightly less intense than the anticipation.
His curiosity, temporarily submerged, was still fighting to get to the surface...
‘The rendezvous point,’ said Carson. ‘If it isn’t chosen at random, and it can’t be if I’m to meet something there, what factors dictate the choice of that position? Why that particular point in space ...?’
He broke off, remembering some of the snippets of information he had been able to pick up and overhear. He wondered suddenly if he had all the factors already in his possession. He went on, ‘Let me think a minute. Is the rendezvous point a product of three velocities acting in different directions? One of them is one thousand and thirty-four miles per hour, one is ... is eighteen point five miles per second and the other is two hundred and fifteen miles per second...’
‘Let me help you in,’ said Parsons. Reece said, ‘Make sure the harness is tight.’ The sudden lack of expression in their faces was answer enough. He had guessed right, but what exactly had he guessed...?
‘The way I see it,’ Carson went on as they checked his straps, ‘is that you send a vehicle to this predetermined point in space using conventional rocket power and several days to get there--just the way you’ve done with John Pebbles--whereupon the pilot presses the button on your hyperdimensional, interdimensional, spacewarp or whatever kind of drive it is that you’ve developed and immediately he is back at home or at least in close orbit ...’
From his position flat on the couch he could not see their faces and neither could he hear them. Both men had stopped breathing.
‘... The question which then occurs to me is, why go the long way out and take the short-cut home? Why not push the button, that is, take the short-cut, in both directions? Or, to put it another way, what would be the effect of doing this? You’re supposed to tell me about effects, remember.’
When Reece answered several seconds later his voice sounded strained, almost frightened. He said, ‘We haven’t tried a two-way fast trip until now because if the timing and positioning were not right the effects might be ... well, anything from highly embarrassing for the guinea-pig concerned to completely and utterly disastrous to the universe we live in. But this time we’re playing safe by boosting you into space before pushing any buttons. Does that satisfy you, Joe?’
‘Now,’ said Carson numbly, ‘you’re confusing me with facts ... ‘
A few minutes later two hands appeared over his shoulder, grasped his and two voices wished him good luck. His ears popped as the hatch slammed shut.
‘Minus twenty-seven minutes and counting,’ said the speaker just above his head in Daniels’s dry tones. ‘Are you comfortable, Joe?’
‘Yes,’ said Carson.
‘Would you like to talk to Doctor Marshall?’
‘Yes.’
But when Jean came on he found that he could not say anything which was not utterly banal. Daniels murmured something about not wanting to intrude on what was undoubtedly going to be a tender farewell and he had work to do in Control, anyway. In the large fraction of a second that it took for him to open and close the office door behind him,
Carson heard screaming. Or perhaps wailing would be a better description of the sound, because it seemed to be a product of distress rather than pain.
Tillotson was supposed to have made a noise like that during re-entry before his capsule burned up, but who was the third guinea-pig and what were they doing to him...?
‘I don’t know, Joe. When I was talking to John Pebbles someone got the wires crossed for a few seconds and I heard it, too. All Daniels would say was that the man was safe, the capsule parachute has opened and been spotted by their private chopper and I will be going out in my professional capacity to the place they’re taking him. He said to try not to let it worry you, Joe.’
‘Hah! ‘
‘He also said that I should use my discretion about telling you who the man is when I do find out.’
Carson waggled his head violently, trying to shake his brains into more effective thinking. He was sure that he now had all the important pieces of the puzzle, but they just would not fit together no matter how he moved them around. While he was still thinking hard the distant door opened and closed again and he heard Daniels say something quietly to Jean.
Maybe if he was given another piece...
‘What about Pebbles?’
‘Calmer now, but still confused. He hasn’t said anything that you don’t already know about the project or himself. Do you want to talk to him?’
‘Not yet,’ said Carson. ‘But try him with that tape, then let me listen to his reaction. Daniels? Can you answer one question? What are the effects--effects, remember--of your instantaneous space-drive on human passengers...?’
Several minutes dragged by, during which he heard Jean phoning to someone to bring her tape-recorder to the office, before Daniels replied. When he spoke he sounded guarded, worried and, so far as the listening Carson was concerned, not at all reassuring.
‘You are very persistent, Joe. By now I would have thought that you had enough to think about out there, but since thinking is all you will be able to do I suppose it does no harm to confuse you further. The effects of what we call a plus trip on human beings and small experimental animals are negligible and quite painless. The effects of a minus trip on animals are also, we are pretty sure, painless. But there is a loss of physical co-ordination and severe mental confusion which lasts several weeks--in animals, that is. You will be the third man to make a minus trip.