Destiny's Orbit

by Donald A. Wollheim (as David Grinnell)

  He was alone in space, in a shell of metal as snug as a coffin, with enough supplies for perhaps seven days, a radio that could broadcast only a set S. O. S. pattern, and a jet good for about a day's acceleration at low power.

  He was heading sunward. The brilliant sphere of the sun was ahead of him, wreathed in its fantastic ring of corona and fire. The ruddy disc of Mars was off to one side, far from the direction he was headed. Earth was not even in sight.

  He rested and stared out at the stars. He could not turn back, for though he could turn the little shell his power would not be sufficient to completely overcome the momentum imparted by the Destiny. He would have to keep on heading inward and hope to sight some rescuing craft before his food ran out.

  Unfortunately, if the conversation he overheard was widespread, any rescuer would probably lock him up and hand him over for trial and summary execution.

  He lay on his stomach, in the thin padded interior of the shell, and looked silently into the emptiness of space. The tiny rocket lifeboat raced on, carrying with it the man who would be king.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Fob all the romantic slant of the histories he had studied and pored over, Ajax Calkins was not entirely unaware that the men who set out to found their own empires ran certain unpleasant risks. They were all subjects of particular nations, originally, and their own governments took dim views of such activities; it was one thing for an enterprising subject to do mighty deeds which brought new lands and glory to his ruler—it was another to set himself up as a king in his own right. If he failed to make his own rule stick, his end could be a rather sticky one.

  Calkins thought for a while of some of the heroes who had failed to bring it off and admitted to himself, for a moment, that this could be his fate, too. If he were captured by EMSA, he most certainly would not be given safe conduct back to his kingdom. The best he could hope for was confinement in some institution from which he might eventually be able to escape, or eventually be released by convincing them he was "cured."

  He decided not to worry about the worst, or, in fact, any of these contingencies. He was Ajax the First, man of destiny, and he would play his part as well as he could, come what may. Alone he traveled on through space, seeing no sign of other life, seeing nothing but the far lights of distant stars, the glow of the sun, and the almost changeless crescent of Mars. The vastness of space is so great that though a thousand thousand space ships might be en route, he might travel on forever and see none of them.

  He lay on his stomach, in his spacesuit, within the tiny shell and pondered on the wisest course to pursue. There was little choice.

  If he sent out his S.O.S. too soon, while within the mass

  of the asteroid belt, his only chance would be that an EMSA ship would find him—or worse a Saturnian sneak raider. Either prospect wouldn't be very pleasing.

  If he held up his S.O.S. until he was crossing Mars' orbit, he might then hope to encounter some vessel on peaceful transport duty between the two inhabited worlds. But the distances then were such that few ships might be within hearing and those vessels not capable of much interference with their routes.

  Besides, should he cross the orbit of Mars at his present speed, no such transport would be likely to be able to stop him. So the thing to do would be to decelerate as much as possible, so that as he crossed the main interplanetary routes he would be drifting—or as near to a drifting speed as any object in free space under the influence of the sun's pull could hope for.

  He worked out an approximation of his speed and what he could do with his slight jet power. He then began tie long wait.

  He rested; he slept; he reviewed his life; he recited to himself all the poems he could remember, and made up verses. He listened to his ship's tiny radio, but could get nothing; its range was too limited.

  He thought of the Third Least Wuj, stranded alone in the mysterious metal planetoid, with lifeless machinery, and things unimaginable. Could the Wuj ever piece together anything? Would he want to? Ajax reflected on the curious timelessness of the United Beings. They had established a level of civilization back when on Earth only cavemen and mammoths roamed the surface; then they had seemed to say, this is good, this is enough. And there the Martians had stayed: No advance; no decline; no interest in any further change, and not much curiosity. Individually they could he moved to investigate, but collectively they seemed content to stay pat.

  Could the Wuj, who often reflected so much the strange stoicism of his ancient civilization, so change his nature as to master the machines of that world? For he had better, or else he would starve to death. How long did it take Martians to starve? Ajax wasn't sure—he had an idea that the spidery types could hibernate if necessary.

  And that Emily Hackenschmidt! He thought about her with mingled periods of anger and fury and other periods when he found stranger emotions moving him. She was a pretty girl and a spunky one, too; he could, he realized, almost learn to like her. She was certainly a girl for an adventurer. If only she wasn't so blasted obstinate! He wondered what had happened to her. Had the EMSA given her a medal and a raise in rank?

  Time passed. He turned the shell around, fired his little rocket and watched as the tiny shell slowly retarded its fall sunward. Past the orbit of Mars now, the crescent having widened out, until now Mars was an orb, a tiny disc of ruddy color off to his side.

  He watched the gauge of his limited fuel supply, and when it was three-quarters empty, he shut off his engine. The rest might yet save his life.

  Now he watched and scanned the sky. How many days passed, he couldn't tell. A week, perhaps two weeks. . . . He did not know. He had cut his food intake, limited his meals to drag out the stores. And he became slowly worried. Another meal or two left, and then slow starvation.

  He switched on his automatic S.O.S. sender broadcasting a general call. Was anything near?

  Slowly the hours passed, and he watched and waited and saw nothing. He ate his last meal, lingeringly, and it became a memory. His water supply, constantly renewing itself in a closed cycle would continue indefinitely. How long could a man go without food? Thirty days, he remembered from somewhere.

  He watched and lay on his stomach and wondered how weak he would be. He saw the stars, tiny cold points of white in the deep blackness. He noticed one that seemed to move among the others. It moved slightly, but it moved.

  Was it a ship?

  It had to be, he thought. What else could move? He knew there were asteroids—like Eros and Anteros, and Apollo— that cut deep within the orbit of Mars, went on almost to Venus. But there were also spaceships.

  He watched the tiny point of moving light, headed his shell that way, and started his engine. He began to move across the thousands of miles of space that separated him from the object between Mars and Earth.

  He watched it slowly grow brighter, and he could see that it was moving. It was moving in an orbit that would take it outward from that of Earth into that of Mars. But it moved so slowly, so strangely unlike the passenger liners and the space yachts, that he wondered what it could be. It would cut the orbit of Mars . . . but not for a terribly long time.

  It came closer, and he swung his shell towards it, and drew nearer. Nothing replied to his S.O.S. What spaceship would not answer such a call at this narrowing distance? What spaceship would not have a robotic tape, recording all the time, that would sound an automatic alarm at the receipt of his signal?

  The ship took shape, and the answers became clear. He saw at first not a slim gleaming metal liner, not a familiar tubular craft, but a wide sweep of white, reflecting starlight and sunlight. He saw emerge a pattern of four huge expanses of metallic surface, and he saw that they were paper-thin sails spread out into the void.

  He watched as it drew closer, and he recognized it from his studies. He saw the four huge sails, spreading over hundreds of square miles of void, and in the center, he saw the tiny doughnut doting the hub of these four incredibly vast sails. He drew toward it, sw
ung his ship in the rear and ran up on it, matching his speed with that of the unusual vessel.

  As he drew closer, the vast sails obscured the stars on all sides, cut out the view of space and left only a curious impression of flickering opacity across the sky.

  He came up to the doughnut and found it even odder. It was a wheel, the hub of which was a flat disc several hundred feet across. On the edge of this circular disc, ex-acdy like a tire fitted on a wheel, was a tube. A metallic tube perhaps thirty feet in width, fitted onto the rim of the disc, and rotating. It was a tire running around the edge of the disc steadily, at a fairly fast rate.

  He knew what it was. It was a cosmic ion-driven space freighter. It was literally a sailing vessel of the sky, the cheapest and most economical means of transportation ever devised between worlds. Put together in orbit, outside the grasp of Earth's gravity, it was set on its way by the infinitesimal pressure of the cosmic rays, of the sun's rays, of the ions generated in little force patches along the frames of the wings. Between the rocket-like drive of the ions and the steady pressure of the light of the sun and stars on its tremendous wing surfaces, it moved across space. Its orbit was a slow, long, leisurely one.

  But it was a refuge; it was life and safety. Ajax swung close to it, circled over the gleaming disc of the central freight compartment, then seeing the unmistakable hatchway of a loading compartment right up near the moving tube at the rim, set his shell down.

  It clung magnetically to the surface. Ajax fastened his helmet, swung back the top of his shell, climbed out.

  He swayed dizzily, fell to his hands and knees for a moment and hung on. He was weak, weaker than he'd feared. Only the fact that there was no gravity kept him from being entirely helpless.

  He caught his breath, staggered to his feet, and shuffled across on his magnetic shoes to the hatchway. He looked for a means of opening it from the outside, but there was none. He clung to it, pounded with his fist on the outside.

  Surely someone must have noticed his arrival. Surely there must be someone who would hear the pounding on the outer hatch, even in the cargo nub. Surely there was a crewman detailed to watch the cargo who would hear.

  Time passed. Nothing seemed to stir inside. What sort of ship was this? Ajax wondered wearily, if he was doomed to die hanging to the outside of salvation?

  He pounded more. Beyond him he could see the sweep of the vast sails, moored to the body of the cargo hold by powerful metal stanchions. He could see now and then the tremor and shift of one of the miles of expanse as the invisible currents of space wafted here and there against those colossal sails.

  Still he clung. Was the ship deserted, dead? Was it all robot, no crewmen? He pounded again, felt his strength diminishing.

  The ionic freighter sailed slowly on.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ajax Calkins clung there for what seemed like hours, but which was more likely minutes in the timelessness of anxiety, when at long last he felt a tremor in the metal disc of the loading port. He got to his feet, stepped aside, and waited as the outer disc slowly unscrewed and then swung open.

  He looked into the wide maw of the cargo airlock, and then stepped inside. He saw the automatic buttons that would close the lock from inside, punched them, waited. With that built-in slowness that seems characteristic of cargo holds, the outer disc swung shut, sealed. There was a hissing of air; gauges on the wall registered the rise of atmosphere inside the chamber, and when it reached parity, Ajax went over and unbolted the inner door.

  He stepped through to a narrow catwalk which threaded its way across a vast area of shrouded masses, undoubtedly the payload of this ship, deposited in the gravityless central hull. A man was standing before him, lit by the dim glow of the permalites in the hold.

  "Calmness, brother," said this individual in a soft whispering tone. "All is serene in the Retreat of the Nirvanists. I am Brother Augustus. How call you yourself?"

  Ajax opened his space helmet, gulped in a few breaths of air. It tasted fresh to him who had been living in the limited and not-well-laundered air of the emergency shell, though doubtless it was stale and oil-laden.

  "I am . . uh . . . Jack Callans ..." he began, making up a name on the spur of the moment, realizing the danger that his real name might have been broadcast as a wanted criminal, ". . . uh . . . my ship was wrecked by disaster ... thanks for saving me."

  Brother Augustus looked at him from deep eyes, stroked the trim black beard that decorated the chin of his rather round and plump face, and nodded slowly. "You look in need of sustenance and rest," he said in his soft, breathy tones. "Come with me to the rim quarters."

  He turned and began to walk the catwalk, and Ajax followed him, his magnetic shoes clinging to the metal walk, his body floating free in the weightlessness of the un-rotating hull. They came to a door, which Brother Augustus opened outwards.

  There was a gap of a yard here, and beyond that yard of space a smooth metal wall moved past rapidly. It was the inner wall of the rim-tube which rushed past, running, Ajax could see, on an endless series of ball-bearings and wheels that raced along a track inside the outer edge of the central hull.

  Brother Augustus beckoned to Ajax to come to the doorway, and when Ajax had done so, the bearded individual deftly stepped behind him. "When the door comes past, I will push you. Grab for the handles, and pull yourself into it."

  "Whaaa . . ." Ajax. began to question bewilderedly when suddenly a wide circular opening appeared, with a plastic door set into it. There was a shove and Ajax flew across the yard of space and slammed into the moving wall. Clutching out wildly, his hand closed on a metal handle and he clung to it, being dragged swiftly along the moving wall. In a second he was in near darkness, clinging to the moving wall, with only a dim greenish light over the closed door a few feet from him to show the other wall rushing past in the opposite direction.

  Weakly Ajax clung to it; then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw that there were a series of such handles and he moved himself to the door by pulling himself along. Once at the door, he pushed on it, and found it would slide aside. He got it open, pushed himself through, and fell across a narrow room as the door slid automatically shut over his head.

  Over his head? Ajax sat up. Sure enough, from where he was, the door he had entered by was in the ceiling of a low room. There was a ladder running down from it, which he presumably should have groped for.

  He sat a moment and then got his orientation. Of course he should have realized he would have weight; the purpose of the revolving tube area was to provide an artificial gravity for the crew of the ship by means of centrifugal force. The rotation exerted a pressure on the outside of the rim and everything within would feel a sense of gravitational weight. Ajax groggily stood up, only to sit down as his knees gave way under him. He was weak from his experiences, from hunger, and from lack of gravity.

  This ship was obviously based upon an economy of power. The centrifugal system for spaceship gravity had been replaced in faster ships by the new techniques of artificial gravity creation; but those techniques required power. The centrifugal system, once started, required but little to maintain it in space.

  He sat there until, after a few minutes, the door opened in the little room, and Brother Augustus looked in. "Ah," he said softly, "I see you are weak."

  He came in, and another man came with him. Now Ajax had the chance to examine the two more closely. Both were garbed alike, in rough brown smocks, reaching to their ankles. An emblem, that of a script letter X, was embroidered on the front of each man's smock. Their hair was long and both wore short beards.

  The two lifted Ajax to his feet and helped him to leave the chamber. He found himself in a long narrow hallway and they walked him down until they came to a long narrow chamber with bunks lining the wall. They lifted Ajax into one.

  "Rest," said Brother Augustus. "We will bring you food. You must regain your strength; then we shall talk."

  It was perhaps two days later that Ajax Calkins was st
rong enough to leave his bed and have the promised-talk with Brother Augustus. Meantime he had learned a good deal about the vessel he was on, through conversation with a patient, gray-bearded man who had been assigned to attend him.

  The ship was one of a number of such in service between Earth and Mars. It utilized the minimum of energy to carry its cargo back and forth; and sailing as it did, its relation to space flight was curiously like that of an old sailing ship of the Mayflower class compared to a fast jet airliner of the Twentieth Century. The Mayflower type took three months to cross the Atlantic; the jet plane six hours.

  This vessel took about three years to cross from Earth to Mars. It never docked on either planet, hovering in orbit while its cargo was unloaded by rocket tenders, and then beginning the slow sail back again. Because of their slowness, because of the endless tedium of the passage, such ships were given over to very special types of crews, crews that would devote the idle hours of the passage—and they were about ninety per cent of the hours involved—into pursuits of the mind and soul.

  There were several such ionic freighters that were true convents—vessels on which the foot of a male had never trod, while saintly women went about their meditations and prayers in an isolation never achieved on Earth. There were monasteries. There was one that was an academy of deep philosophy and abstract mathematics.

  This one was the Retreat of the Nirvanists. It was a sort of cult—a cult run by the man known as Brother Augustus— and its brotherhood were but temporary devotees, paying a good sum for the privilege of the long trip away from the tensions and troubles of Earth. In short it was a retreat of tired businessmen, men who wanted to overcome their ulcers, get away from nagging wives, escape other mental problems, or simply get away from it" all for a half-dozen years.