by Ben Bova
Just then the hatch on the opposite end of the section swung back. Four space-suited figures huddled there, anonymous in their bulky suits and reflective bubble helmets.
Duchamp’s voice crackled in my earphones, “Fuchs is about a hundred meters below us and moving up closer. Connect your tethers to each other and start down to his ship.”
Rodriguez said, “Right,” then pointed at me. “You first, Mr. Humphries.”
I had to swallow several times before I could answer him, “All right. Then Marguerite.”
“Yessir,” Rodriguez said.
There was no need to cycle the airlock. I just slid its inner hatch open and stepped inside, then punched the button that opened the outer hatch. Nothing happened. For a moment I just stood there like a fool, hearing the wind whistling around me, feeling trapped.
“Use the manual override!” Rodriguez said impatiently.
“Right,” I answered, trying to recover some shred of dignity.
I tugged at the wheel and the outer hatch slowly, stubbornly inched open. Rodriguez handed me the first few tethers, clipped together end to end. He and Marguerite were hurriedly snapping the others onto one another.
“Attach the free end to a ladder rung,” he told me.
“Right,” I said again. It was the only word I could think of.
I leaned out the open airlock hatch to attach the tether and what I saw made me giddy with fright.
We were scudding along high above an endless layer of sickly yellowish clouds, billowing and undulating like a thing alive. And then the huge curving bulk of Lucifer slid in below us, so near that I thought we would crash together in a collision that would kill us all.
“Lucifer is on-station,” I heard Duchamp’s voice in my earphones.
Fuchs’s ship seemed enormous, much bigger than ours. It was drawing nearer, slowly but noticeably closing the gap between us. Gasping for breath, I clicked the end of the tether onto the nearest ladder rung. Then I realized that Rodriguez was right behind me, feeding tether line out the hatch, past my booted feet. I watched the tether snake down toward the top of Lucifer’s bulbous shell, dropping like an impossibly thin line of string down, down, down, and still not reaching the walkway that ran the length of the ship’s gas envelope.
I suddenly realized that I hadn’t taken any of my enzyme supply with me. Even if we made it to Lucifer I’d be without the medicine I needed to live.
Then Hesperos dipped drunkenly and the gondola groaned again like a man dying in agony. I happened to glance along the outer surface and saw that the metal was streaked with ugly dark smudges that ran from the nose to the airlock hatch and even beyond. I could see the thin metal skin cracking along those dark streaks.
Marguerite and Rodriguez were behind me, the four other spacesuited figures—Waller and the technicians—stood huddled on the other side of the airlock hatch. They were all waiting impatiently for me to start the descent toward Lucifer and safety. I stood frozen at the lip of the open hatch. Clambering down that dangling tether certainly did not look at all safe to me.
The groaning rose in pitch until it was like a screeching of fingernails on a chalkboard. I pulled my head back inside the airlock chamber, panting as if I’d run a thousand meters.
“She’s breaking up!” Rodriguez yelled, so loud that I could hear him through my helmet as well as in my earphones.
Before my eyes, the front section of the gondola tore away with a horrifying grinding, ripping sound, carrying Waller and the technicians with it. They screamed, terrified high-pitched wails that shrieked in my earphones. The front end broke entirely free and flashed past my horrified eyes, tumbling end over end, spilling the space-suited figures out into the open, empty air.
“Save meee!” one of them screamed, a shriek so strained and piercing I couldn’t tell which of them uttered it.
I saw a body thump down onto Lucifer, below us; it missed the catwalk and slid off into oblivion, howling madly all the time.
I could hardly stand up, my knees were so watery. Rodriguez, pressed in behind me in the airlock, whispered, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
The screams went on and on, like red-hot ice picks jammed into my ears. Even after they stopped, my head rang with their memory.
“They’re dead,” Rodriguez said, his voice hollow.
“All of them,” said Marguerite, quavering, fighting back tears.
“And so will we be,” Duchamp’s voice crackled, “if we don’t get down those tethers right now.”
The ship was bucking violently now, heaving up and down in a wild pitching motion. The wind tore at us from the gaping emptiness where the nose of the gondola had been. A ridiculous thought popped into my mind: We didn’t need the airlock now, we could jump out of the ship through the jagged open end of the gondola.
I could hear Rodriguez panting hard in my earphones. At least, I assumed it was Rodriguez. Marguerite was there, too, and I thought Duchamp had to be on her way down to us by now.
“Go on!” Rodriguez yelled, as if the suit radios weren’t working. “Down the tether.”
If I had thought about it for half a millisecond I would have been so terrified I’d have frozen up, paralyzed with fear. But there wasn’t any time for that. I grabbed the tether with both gloved hands.
“The servomotors will hold you,” Rodriguez said. “Loop your boots in the line to take some of the load off your arms. Like circus acrobats.”
I made a clumsy try at it, but only managed to tangle the tether around one ankle. The servomotors on the backs of the gloves clamped my fingers on the line, sure enough. All I had to worry about was making a mistake and letting go of the blasted line with both hands at the same time.
Down I went, hand over hand.
It was hard work, clambering down that swaying, slithering line of connected tethers. Drenched in cold sweat, my heart hammering in my ears, I tried to clamp my boots around the line to take some of the strain off my arms but that was a clumsy failure. I inched down the line, my powered gloves clamping and unclamping slowly, like an arthritic old man’s hands.
Lucifer seemed to be a thousand kilometers below me. I could see the end of the connected tethers dangling a good ten meters or more above the catwalk that ran the length of the ship’s gas envelope. It looked like a hundred meters, to me. A thousand. When I got to the end of the line I’d have to jump for it.
If I made it to the end of the line.
And all the while I crawled down the length of tethers I kept hearing the terrified, agonized screams of the crewmen who fell to their deaths. My mind kept replaying that long, wailing, “Save meee!” over and over again. What would I scream if I missed the ship and plunged down into the fiery depths of inescapable death?
“Send the others down.” It was Fuchs’s heavy, harsh voice in my earphones. “Don’t wait. Get started now.”
“No,” Marguerite said. I could sense her struggling, hear her breathing hard. “Wait . . .”
But Rodriguez said firmly, “No time for waiting. Now!”
I looked up and saw another figure start down the tethers. In the space suit it was impossible to see who it was, but I figured it had to be Marguerite.
She was coming down the line a lot faster than I, her boots gripping the tether expertly. Had she told me she’d done mountain climbing? I couldn’t remember. Foolish thought, at that particular moment.
I tried to go faster and damned near killed myself. Let go of the line with one hand, then missed my next grab for it while my other hand was opening. There’s a delay built into the servomotors that control the gloves’ exoskeletons; you move your fingers and the motors resist a little, then kick in. My glove’s fingers were opening, loosening my grip on the tether, when I desperately wanted them to tighten again.
There I was, one hand flailing free and the other letting go of my grip on the tether. If I hadn’t been so scared I would’ve thrown up.
I lunged for the line with my free hand, caught it, and closed my fi
ngers as fast and hard as I could. I thought I heard the servomotors whining furiously although that must have been my imagination, since I’d never heard them before through the suit and helmet.
I hung there by one hand, all my weight on that arm and shoulder, for what seemed like an hour or two. Then I clasped the tether with my other hand, took the deepest breath I’d ever made in my life, and started down the tether again.
“Where’s my mother?” I heard Marguerite’s fear-filled voice in my earphones.
“She’s on her way,” Rodriguez answered.
But when I looked up I saw only their two figures clambering down the tether. Hesperos was a wreck, jouncing and shuddering above us, falling apart. The gas envelope was cracked like an overcooked egg. The gondola was half gone, its front end torn away, new cracks zigzagging along its length even as I watched. The bugs from the clouds must have made a home for themselves in the ship’s metal structure.
Well, I thought grimly, they’ll all roast to death when she loses her last bit of buoyancy and plunges into the broiling heat below.
Then I caught a vision of Hesperos crashing into Lucifer, and wondered how long Fuchs would keep his ship hovering below us.
“Hurry it up!” he called, as if he could read my thoughts.
Marguerite was sobbing openly; I could hear her over the suit radio. Rodriguez had gone silent except for his hard panting as he worked his way down the tether. They were both getting close to me.
And Duchamp was still in the ship. On the bridge, I realized, working to hold the shattered Hesperos in place long enough for us to make it to safety. But what about her safety?
“Captain Duchamp,” I called, surprised that my voice worked at all. “Leave the bridge and come down the safety tether. That’s an order.”
No response.
“Mother!” Marguerite sobbed. “Mama!”
She wasn’t coming. I knew it with the certainty of religious revelation. Duchamp was staying on the bridge, fighting to hold the battered wreck of Hesperos in place long enough for us to make it to safety. Giving her life to save us. To save her daughter, really. I doubt that she cared a rat’s hiccup for the rest of us. Maybe she had some feelings for Rodriguez. Certainly not for me.
And then I was at the end of the tether line. I dangled there, swaying giddily, my boots swinging in empty air. The broad expanse of Lucifer’s gas envelope still seemed an awfully long way off. A long drop.
All my weight, including the weight of my space suit and backpack, was hanging from my hands. I could feel the bones of my upper arms being pulled slowly, agonizingly, out of my shoulder sockets, like a man on the rack. I couldn’t hang on for long.
Then I saw three space-suited figures climbing slowly up the curving flank of the massive shell. They looked like toys, like tiny dolls, and I realized just how much bigger Lucifer was than Hesperos. Enormously bigger.
Which meant that it was also much farther away than I had first guessed. It wasn’t ten meters below me; it must have been more like a hundred meters. I couldn’t survive a jump that long. No one could.
I looked up. Through my bubble helmet I saw Marguerite and Rodriguez coming down the line toward me, almost on top of me.
“What now?” I asked Rodriguez. “It’s too far to jump.”
Before he could answer, Fuchs’s voice grated in my earphones. “I’m bringing Lucifer up close enough for you to reach. I can’t keep her in position for long, so when I say jump, you either jump or be damned. Understand me?”
“Understood,” Rodriguez said.
“Okay.”
The broad back of Lucifer rose toward us, slowly moving closer. The three space-suited figures were on the catwalk now, laying out long coils of tethers between them.
We were getting tantalizingly close, but each time I thought we were within a safe jumping distance Hesperos bobbed up or sideways and we were jerked away from Lucifer. My arms were blazing with pain. I could hear Rodriguez mumbling in Spanish, perhaps a prayer. More likely some choice curses.
I looked up again and saw that Hesperos was barely holding together. The gondola was cracked in a hundred places, the gas shell above it was missing pieces like an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle.
The only thing in our favor was that the air was thick enough down at this level to be relatively calm. Relatively. Hesperos was still jouncing and fluttering like a leaf in a strong breeze.
Marguerite’s sobbing seemed to have stopped. I supposed that she finally understood her mother was not coming and there was nothing she could do about it. There would be plenty of time to mourn after we had saved our own necks, I thought. When your own life is on the line, as ours were, you worry about your own skin and save your sentiment for everyone else for later.
“Now!” Fuchs’s command shattered my pointless musings.
I was still dangling a tremendous distance from Lucifer’s catwalk, my shoulders and arms screaming in agony from the strain.
“Now, dammit!” he roared. “Jump!”
I let go. For a dizzying instant it felt as if I hung in midair, not moving at all. By the time I realized I was falling I thudded down onto the curving hull of Lucifer’s envelope with a bang that knocked the breath out of my lungs.
I had missed the catwalk and the men waiting to help me by several meters. I felt myself sliding along the curve of the shell, my arms and legs scrabbling to find a grip, a handhold, anything to stop me from sliding off into the oblivion below. Nothing. The shell’s skin was smooth as polished marble.
In my earphones I heard a sort of howling noise, a strangled wail that yowled in my ears like some primitive animal’s shriek. It went on and on without letup. I couldn’t hear anything else, nothing except that agonized howl.
If Lucifer had been as small as Hesperos I would have slid off the shell and plunged into the thick hot clouds kilometers beneath me. I sometimes wonder if I would have been roasted to death as I fell deeper into the blistering hot atmosphere or crushed like an eggshell by the tremendous pressure.
Instead, Fuchs’s crewmen saved me. One of them jumped off the catwalk and slid on the rump of his suit to my side and grabbed me firmly. Even through the yowling noise in my earphones I could hear him grunt painfully when his tether stopped us both. Then he looped the extra tether he carried with him around my shoulders.
I was shaking so hard inside my suit that it took me three tries before I could control my legs well enough to follow Fuchs’s crewman back up to the catwalk, where his companion already had his arms wrapped around Marguerite. I found out later that she had dropped neatly onto the catwalk and not even lost her balance.
I was on my hands and knees, gasping from the efforts of the last few minutes. My shoulders felt as if someone had ripped my arms out of them. I was beyond pain; I was numb, wooden.
The catwalk seemed to shift beneath me, tossing me onto my side. I looked up and saw Hesperos breaking apart, big chunks of the envelope tearing away, the gondola splitting along its length.
Marguerite screamed. I saw the line of tethers flapping wildly, empty.
Raising myself painfully to my knees, I looked for Rodriguez. He was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Rodriguez?” I demanded.
No one answered.
I looked directly at Marguerite, who had disengaged herself from the crewmen who’d held her.
“Where’s Tom?” I screamed.
I couldn’t see her face inside the helmet, but sensed her shaking her head. “He jumped after me . . .”
“What happened to him?” I climbed to my feet shakily.
Fuchs’s voice answered in my earphones. “The third person in your party jumped too late. I had to jink the ship sideways to avoid the debris falling from Hesperos. He missed us and fell into the clouds.”
That was the long, terrified scream I heard in my earphones: Rodriguez falling, falling all that long way down to his death.
I stayed there on my knees until two of the crewmen yanked me up roughly by
the armpits of my suit. I could hardly breathe. Every muscle and tendon in my body was in agony. And Rodriguez was dead.
Marguerite sobbed, “My mother . . .” She sounded exhausted, as drained physically and emotionally as I felt.
I looked up. Hesperos was gone. No sign of the ship. Nothing above us but swirling sickly yellow-gray clouds. Nothing below us but more of the same.
One of the crewmen motioned me toward a hatch set into the catwalk. I nodded inside my helmet and headed for it, Marguerite following me.
Rodriguez, Captain Duchamp, Waller, and the three technicians—all dead. Venus had killed them. But then I realized that was not true. It was my fault. I had brought them to this hellish world. I had made them intrude into this place where humans were never meant to be. I had killed them.
And myself, as well, I thought. Without my medication I’d be dead soon enough.
But I was still alive. Venus had tried to kill me and failed. I had survived. I still lived.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger. I remembered reading that somewhere. All right, I thought; as long as I’m still alive I’m going to push on. No matter what lies ahead, I’m going to get down to the surface of this hellish world and find what’s left of my brother.
And I’m not doing it for Alex, or for the prize money, or even to prove to my father that I’m more than a Runt. I’m doing it for me, because I want to, because I have to.
Venus might very well kill me, in the end. But even so, I’ll die trying.
Not everyone who leaves Earth for a life in space will be an adventurer or scientist. As habitats grow off-planet, inevitably people will be attracted to them for more personal reasons. One of those reasons may well be the gentler pull of gravity to be found in orbit, or on the Moon.
The immediate inspiration for “The Man Who Hated Gravity” sprang from personal experience: I wrecked my knee playing tennis and had to hobble around on crutches for a while. Yet, now that I think about it, I had written about the advantages of the Moon’s one-sixth g as far back as my 1976 novel, Millennium. I thought then that my secret ambition to dance like Fred Astaire—a hopeless passion on Earth—might just be realizable if only I could get to the gentler gravity of the Moon.