Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  Moira lifted her head and noticed Robbie staring at her. ‘Enjoying it?’ she asked calmly.

  The remark gave him an unworldly sensation; he was startled to receive her communication so quickly across so many light years. ‘It’s about black holes.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, lowering her head again and steering her limbs into a new but no less improbable arrangement. ‘Your mum tells me you want to be an astronaut when you grow up.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Robbie, feeling slightly embarrassed and wondering what else his mum might have told Moira, not to mention half the town.

  ‘Better watch out for black holes, then. They sound mind-blowing.’ The television showed a dazzling photograph, taken through a huge telescope, of a million stars swirling like foam round a plughole, and as he looked at it, Robbie thought of his mind being blown clean out of his space helmet by an unexpected event horizon inadvertently smuggled into the mission by way of Moira’s handbag. She, meanwhile, was relaying further instructions about the mission to Janet. ‘Breathe slowly and steadily. Let your chest rise and fall. Don’t force it. Relax.’

  ‘Could black holes truly exist? Einstein thought no, and for a long time all other physicists agreed with him. But matter whirling around a black hole would emit intense flares of light, radio waves or X-rays that would allow the hole to be detected, and astronomers think they can see this happening right now in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. If humans had X-ray eyes, the brightest place in the entire sky would be a tiny point orbiting one of the swan’s faint stars. More than six thousand light years away but perhaps only a few hundred miles in diameter, Cygnus X-1 is almost certainly a black hole, the first to be positively identified.’

  Then it was the astronomer’s turn once more, describing what it might be like beyond the event horizon. ‘You’d find yourself in a rapidly collapsing universe – everything would be blue-shifted and you’d very quickly reach the singularity marking the end of everything. That’s the complete opposite of what we see on the outside – an expanding universe evolving away from an initial singularity, the big bang. So a black hole is a bit like a universe turned inside out. Or maybe it’s the black hole that’s the right way round, and the rest of the universe that’s inverted.’

  Robbie watched a succession of experts carry the subject far beyond anything he could hope to comprehend, so that soon his brain felt as sore and twisted as his legs had been while trying to adopt the locust position. But the pictures were good – one sequence showed what would happen if a probe encountered a black hole whose horizon was small.

  ‘The spacecraft orbits the hole perfectly safely. Then one of the astronauts needs to go outside to do some repairs.’

  Robbie was carefully steering the capsule through the X-ray flashes of matter whizzing round the invisible hole when a voice calls out from behind. ‘Captain, I think we have a problem here.’ Robbie turns to see the ship’s engineer trying to make the governor work. ‘It’s stuck, Captain, maybe a bit of meteorite’s got lodged in the flue. I’ll go out and check …’

  ‘No!’ Robbie insists. ‘This is my job.’ He tunes the control panel to Athlone, switches to medium wave, then goes and puts on his spacesuit.

  ‘Let’s try something easier,’ Moira suggested, but Robbie was already going through the airlock and floating out into space.

  ‘Our astronaut could orbit the black hole safely too, but any change of course might send him tumbling inwards, and that would mean trouble. All objects falling into a black hole are directed towards the centre, so if the astronaut falls feet first, his left and right sides will get squeezed together, both trying to reach the same place. But in addition, the astronaut’s head – being further away from the hole – feels less gravitational pull than his toes, so he is stretched like spaghetti.’

  Over the intercom in his space helmet, Moira’s voice was beckoning him. ‘Stretch – relax – push – relax.’ Robbie tries to keep his attention on the small chimney projecting from the side of the spaceship which appears to have been fouled by dust, leaves, crisp packets and other space debris whipped up by the cosmic tornado. Faces are at the window, looking out at him. Be careful, Captain! Mind and don’t tear your suit! Get back in here before you’re blown away!

  Robbie tugs at the space rubbish but loses his grip his flailing arm connects with the jet pack on his chest, the ignition button is inadvertently pressed and in a single terrible moment a powerful blast of compressed gas is released, accelerating Robbie away from the safety of the mother ship, away from the agonized faces of his colleagues at the window, and directly towards the black hole. ‘Relax!’ the voice inside his helmet still insists, ‘Let go!’, and he feels himself being stretched and squeezed, squeezed and stretched, sucked and blue-shifted into oblivion.

  ‘I think we’ve had enough now,’ said Moira, standing up. ‘Is your programme nearly finished?’

  ‘I don’t want to see it any more,’ said Robbie. ‘It’s just people talking.’ The screen displayed an equation containing lots of Greek letters, and a man in old-fashioned clothes.

  ‘It’s time for you two to get ready for bed. If you go first, Robbie, I can read you a story. Have you got a favourite book?’ A few minutes later he was tucked up warmly with Moira sitting beside him holding Rocket to the Stars. ‘It’s not the sort I had in mind,’ she said. ‘Which bit shall I read?’

  ‘The start.’

  Moira recited, ‘In 1957 the world was amazed when Russia launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. Its name means “fellow traveller”, and the small unmanned probe marked the beginning of the space race. But man’s dreams of conquering space go farther back in time.’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘You’re really serious about wanting to be an astronaut, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’d prefer being a cosmonaut.’

  ‘Because of your dad? He’s got strong views, but there are other ways of seeing things.’

  ‘I’d feel safer in a Russian mission, that’s all. They build things better.’

  Moira rolled her eyes. ‘So it is because of your dad. Well, I’m sure you’ll grow up to be whatever you want to be, because you’re a clever boy. Do I need to keep reading this book or can I leave you to sleep?’

  ‘Read,’ he said. So she carried on, kept away from her cigarettes by the history of rocketry, and in this way Robbie’s life was saved.

  7

  When the new school term started, Robbie found himself in Miss McPhail’s class and the first thing she made them do was write about their summer holiday. The Coyles had been to Rothesay where it rained for two weeks solid, so he decided to write instead about his space programme and how it was progressing. Eventually Miss McPhail started asking pupils to stand up and read their work, and after choosing Ian Brodie and Margaret Pollock she alighted on Robbie. He got to his feet and began: ‘I spent the summer training to be an astronaut.’

  The entire class erupted. Miss McPhail was laughing too, but called the class to order so that he could continue.

  ‘The job of astronaut requires excellent physical fitness and much technical expertise. Each day I lifted shoes, baked-bean tins and other heavy weights so as to build up my strength. I have also been studying the Russian alphabet so that I will be able to communicate with the ground crew, and I am learning the constellations because they help in navigation.’

  Frank Coulter was staring at him, open-mouthed. ‘You’re mental.’

  ‘Quiet, Frank,’ the teacher said. ‘Have you written anything else, Robert?’

  ‘No, Miss McPhail.’

  ‘Did you go away anywhere on holiday?’

  ‘Only Rothesay.’

  ‘That’s a very interesting place. What did you do there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, try writing about it. Now, Suzanne, let’s hear what you’ve got for us.’

  Suzanne had written about the kind of nothing that consists of a caravan in Ayr, a black-and-white dog, a new friend called El
aine. Miss McPhail called it excellent. Later she stood at Robbie’s desk looking over his shoulder to read the rest of his piece. ‘It’s very well done,’ she said, ‘though not what I had in mind. Wouldn’t you rather write about real life and ordinary people?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s boring.’

  Miss McPhail frowned. ‘Do you really find life boring, Robert?’

  He nodded. ‘The doctor says I’ve got a vivid imagination.’

  ‘He’s right about that,’ said Miss McPhail. ‘But we’ll find something to keep it occupied.’ Her solution was the same as the doctor’s: she prescribed a book which Robbie dutifully took home with him that afternoon. The author’s name reminded him of brontosaurus, his favourite dinosaur, so that was a good sign; but the title – Jane Eyre – was too much like the place where Suzanne had gone on holiday, and the book turned out to be a girls’ story much like hers, with not so much as a pterodactyl in sight. He quickly gave up.

  It would be good to have wings like a pterodactyl’s, Robbie thought; great webs of skin connecting arms and legs, enabling flight. If there was nothing on television you could fly out the window instead. There’d be shops in treetops, play parks on cliff edges. If only there’d been a child born, some time in history, with the tiniest bit of wing, able to jump a little bit further whenever sabre-toothed tigers ran after it. Then evolution would have taken care of the rest – just like brontosaurus with its long neck. But humans can’t fly, so the winged baby never happened. It was all so unfair.

  There was another way of looking at things, and they sang about it at school. All things bright and beautiful – the Lord God made them all. Robbie imagined it being like the Airfix kits he’d started making, ever since he was given a Lancaster bomber for his tenth birthday, all in pieces in a box with a tube of glue and an instruction book that was nearly as long as Jane Eyre but made a lot more sense once you got the hang of it. There was God one day, feeling bored in heaven with nothing to do, when suddenly he decides to take up a hobby. So he gets this enormous box called The Universe, with a picture on it showing trees and fields and birds, and people too. All he’s got to do is put it together in the right order.

  ‘Aye, but who made the pieces?’ asked Scott, when Robbie explained the idea to his friend one Saturday while they threw stones at cans lined up beside the burn.

  ‘The pieces were always there,’ said Robbie. ‘Nobody made them.’

  ‘That’s pointless,’ said Scott.

  Certainly it was one of the weaker aspects of the theory; nevertheless, Robbie liked to think of God sitting with all the parts of the plant and animal kingdom laid out before him on an enormous table, a tube of glue held in his hand, the liquid at the tip of its silver nozzle congealing into a gummy bead as the Lord inspects page after page of instruction. We would all be like Lancaster bombers, Messer-schmitts, Panzers or any other machine in the Airfix range; different combinations of the same pre-moulded components.

  A minister visited the school. He introduced himself as the Reverend Donaldson and spoke to the assembled children about his work in Africa. He said that an old woman took a pot of boiling water from the fire and spilled a drop on her foot but didn’t feel anything, and this meant she had leprosy. The Reverend Donaldson was a bit like Dr Muir, old and bald. He came round the classrooms after they had all gone back to their lessons and when he got to Robbie’s class he was shown the pictures and stories on the wall. Everyone carried on with their work but tried to see what the Reverend Donaldson was looking at.

  ‘This is an interesting piece,’ he was saying to Miss McPhail. Robbie had written it, about the Apollo Moon landings. Miss McPhail brought the minister over to meet the proud author. The reverend beamed down at him and placed a broad, brown-spotted hand on his shoulder. ‘How old are you, young man?’

  ‘Ten.’

  The reverend raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Ten … what?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  The reverend chuckled and smiled encouragingly. ‘Ten years … what?’

  Miss McPhail seemed to be mouthing something at Robbie, who was trying to do a mental calculation. ‘Ten years, three months and … eight days.’

  ‘Don’t you know you ought to say “sir”?’ said the minister, turning away and about to move on to look at someone else’s work. Robbie put his hand up, and Miss McPhail asked what he wanted.

  ‘I’ve got a question for the minister.’

  ‘Go ahead and ask me, lad.’

  ‘Please – sir – how do you know God’s real?’

  Miss McPhail frowned, but the reverend kept beaming and spread his hands in a grand gesture of benevolence. ‘You only need look around and you’ll see his works everywhere.’

  ‘Did God give that woman in Africa leprosy?’

  Miss McPhail intervened. ‘Quiet now, Robbie, the minister has better things to do than answer impertinent questions.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ the minister said genially. ‘This young fellow has asked a very important question, and I think the whole class might like to know the answer.’ The raising of his voice had caused every head to turn in Robbie’s direction; Frank Coulter looked ready for more fun at Robbie’s expense.

  ‘Now, children,’ said the minister, ‘we all know that sad things happen in this world. Can anyone tell me something sad – yes, you, young lady.’

  ‘My goldfish died. She was called Polly.’

  ‘Well, that really is very sad,’ the reverend told her, ‘and I’m sure you must have felt awful about it. But fish do die, don’t they? A fish can’t last forever, no more than anything else can, so when the time comes we have to be strong and remember all the happy times we’ve had looking after it.’

  ‘I used to feed her every day,’ said the girl, Fiona McBride, who was already on the verge of tears just thinking about it. Miss McPhail didn’t look too happy either, and the raised hand of Margaret Cooper at the other end of the room offered a diversion.

  ‘You shouldn’t feed them every day,’ said Margaret, ‘so maybe that’s why she died. I’ve got a hamster.’

  ‘Oh, hamsters are lovely creatures,’ the Reverend Donaldson agreed, and this prompted yet more hands.

  ‘Please, sir, I’ve got a dog. A collie.’ Stephen Fraser looked suitably gratified by the reverend’s endorsement of collies as wonderful companions.

  ‘Children, children,’ said Miss McPhail, ‘we really don’t have time to hear about everyone’s pet. The minister knows you all love your animals and look after them.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘But … oh dear.’

  Fiona McBride was sobbing uncontrollably. ‘It’s not true – I didn’t feed Polly too much. I didn’t kill her!’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Miss McPhail insisted, going to comfort her.

  ‘You see, boys and girls,’ the reverend concluded. ‘Sadness is part of life, and there are times when we need to be strong.’

  Robbie put up his hand again. ‘Sir, did God make Fiona’s fish die?’

  Miss McPhail shot an impatient glance from the shaking, tearful former fish owner she had almost calmed before Robbie’s intervention.

  ‘Of course not,’ said the reverend. ‘God didn’t kill wee Polly.’

  ‘It was because she was fed too much,’ Margaret Cooper helpfully reiterated.

  ‘It wasn’t that either,’ said the reverend. ‘It just happened, that’s all. These things happen.’

  ‘But God can do anything,’ said Robbie. ‘So why couldn’t he cure the woman with leprosy, or make the fish stay alive? Or the two children who fell in the river and got saved by the man who drowned – the one on the memorial.’

  The reverend nodded. ‘That’s a famous story, young man, and a very great example of what faith can do. James Deuchar gave up his own life so that others could have theirs.’

  ‘Then why can’t God do that too?’ said Robbie.

  ‘What, kill himself so a wee fish could stay alive?’

  Everyone laugh
ed, even Fiona, so caught up was she in the edgy hysteria which now relieved the classroom’s tension. Frank Coulter pretended to be a goldfish, gulping and flapping his arms most convincingly.

  While Miss McPhail subdued the class, the reverend patted Robbie on the head. ‘You asked a serious question and I can see that you’re a thoughtful fellow. What do you want to be when you grow up?’

  From the corner of his eye, Robbie could see that Frank Coulter’s fish impression had turned into a rotating finger at the side of his skull. ‘I want to be a scientist. Maybe an astronomer.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a fine ambition,’ said the minister. ‘And do you go to church?’

  Robbie felt his mouth go completely dry. ‘No, sir.’ Nor did most of the rest of the class, but there was a palpable sense among them all that a great naughtiness had been publicly exposed.

  ‘Sunday school?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You should. You’d have lots of fun and all your questions would be answered.’

  Robbie said, ‘Don’t you think maybe all the animals and plants are made of pieces, like a machine, and one day the machine stops working?’

  ‘I think that’s a very sensible and scientific way of looking at it,’ said the minister. ‘And when you see a complicated machine like a clock, you know that somebody must have made it. And a goldfish or a hamster is a lot more complicated than a clock, which is how we know there must be a God who created all these wonderful things. But if God made them last forever then there wouldn’t be room for all the fishes and hamsters and everything else that would soon fill up the world, so each of them has to go when the time comes. No matter how we feel about it, everything is for the best, because that’s how God made it. He wants us all to be happy, and the only way we can know what happiness feels like is by being sad now and again, so we’ve got some kind of comparison. Well, children, are we all happy now?’