by Ben Bova
“I love it here,” he repeated for the fortieth time that day.
Gradually, though, his euphoric mood sank. The circus began giving abbreviated performances inside its Big Top, and Rolando stood helplessly pinned to the ground while the spotlights picked out the young fliers in their skintight costumes as they tumbled slowly, dreamily through the air between one trapeze and the next, twisting, tumbling, soaring in the soft lunar gravity in ways that no one had ever done before. The audience gasped and cheered and gave them standing ovations. Rolando stood rooted near one of the tent’s entrances, deep in shadow, wearing a tourist’s pale green coveralls, choking with envy and frustrated rage.
The crowds were small—there were only a few thousand people living at Moonbase, plus perhaps another thousand tourists—but they shook the plastic tent with their roars of delight.
Rolando watched a few performances, then stayed away. But he noticed at the Olympic-sized pool that raw teenagers were diving from a thirty-meter platform and doing half a dozen somersaults as they fell languidly in the easy gravity. Even when they hit the water the splashes they made rose lazily and then fell back into the pool so leisurely that it seemed like a slow-motion film.
Anyone can be an athlete here, Rolando realized as he watched tourists flying on rented wings through the upper reaches of the Main Plaza’s vaulted dome.
Children could easily do not merely Olympic, but Olympian feats of acrobatics. Rolando began to dread the possibility of seeing a youngster do a quadruple somersault from a standing start.
“Anyone can defy gravity here,” he complained to his wife, silently adding, Anyone but me.
It made him morose to realize that feats which had taken him a lifetime to accomplish could be learned by a toddler in half an hour. And soon he would have to return to Earth with its heavy, oppressive, mocking gravity.
I know you’re waiting for me, he said to gravity. You’re going to kill me—if I don’t do the job for myself first.
Two nights before they were due to depart they were the dinner guests of the chief administrator and several of his staff. As formal an occasion as Moonbase ever has, the men wore sport jackets and turtleneck shirts, the women real dresses and jewelry. The administrator told hoary old stories of his childhood yearning to be in the circus. Rolando remained modestly silent, even when the administrator spoke glowingly of how he had admired the daring feats of the Great Rolando—many years ago.
After dinner, back in their apartment, Rolando turned on his wife. “You got them to invite us up here, didn’t you?”
She admitted, “The bionics company told me that they were going to end your consulting fee. They want to give up on you! I asked them to let us come here to see if your leg would be better in low gravity.”
“And then we go back to Earth.”
“Yes.”
“Back to real gravity. Back to my being a cripple!”
“I was hoping . . .” Hervoice broke and she sank onto the bed, crying.
Suddenly Rolando’s anger was overwhelmed by a searing, agonizing sense of shame. All these years she had been trying so hard, standing between him and the rest of the world, protecting him, sheltering him. And for what? So that he could scream at her for the rest of his life?
He could not bear it any longer.
Unable to speak, unable even to reach his hand out to comfort her, he turned and lumbered out of the apartment, leaving his wife weeping alone.
He knew where he had to be, where he could finally put an end to this humiliation and misery. He made his way to the Big Top.
A stubby gunmetal gray robot stood guard at the main entrance, its sensors focusing on Rolando like the red glowing eyes of a spider.
“No access at this time except to members of the circus troupe,” it said in a synthesized voice.
“I am the Great Rolando.”
“One moment for voiceprint identification,” said the robot, then, “Approved.”
Rolando swept past the contraption with a snort of contempt.
The Big Top was empty at this hour. Tomorrow they would start to dismantle it. The next day they would head back to Earth.
Rolando walked slowly, stiffly to the base of the ladder that reached up to the trapezes. The spotlights were shut down. The only illumination inside the tent came from the harsh working lights spotted here and there.
Rolando heaved a deep breath and stripped off his jacket. Then, gripping one of the ladder’s rungs, he began to climb: Good leg first, then the artificial leg. He could feel no difference between them. His body was only one-sixth its earthly weight, of course, but still the artificial leg behaved exactly as his normal one.
He reached the topmost platform. Holding tightly to the side rail he peered down into the gloomy shadows a hundred feet below.
With a slow, ponderous nod of his head the Great Rolando finally admitted what he had kept buried inside him all these long anguished years. Finally the concealed truth emerged and stood naked before him. With tear-filled eyes he saw its reality.
He had been living a lie for all these years. He had been blaming gravity for his own failure. Now he understood with precise, final clarity that it was not gravity that had destroyed his life.
It was fear.
He stood rooted on the high platform, trembling with the memory of falling, plunging, screaming terror. He knew that this fear would live within him always, for the remainder of his life. It was too strong to overcome; he was a coward, probably had always been a coward, all his life. All his life.
Without consciously thinking about it Rolando untied one of the trapezes and gripped the rough surface of its taped bar. He did not bother with resin. There would be no need.
As if in a dream he swung out into the empty air, feeling the rush of wind ruffling his gray hair, hearing the creak of the ropes beneath his weight.
Once, twice, three times he swung back and forth, kicking higher each time. He grunted with the unaccustomed exertion. He felt sweat trickling from his armpits.
Looking down, he saw the hard ground so far below. One more fall, he told himself. Just let go and that will end it forever. End the fear. End the shame.
“Teach me!”
The voice boomed like cannon fire across the empty tent. Rolando felt every muscle in his body tighten.
On the opposite platform, before him, stood the chief administrator, still wearing his dinner jacket.
“Teach me!” he called again. “Show me how to do it. Just this once, before you have to leave.”
Rolando hung by his hands, swinging back and forth. The younger man’s figure standing on the platform came closer, closer, then receded, dwindled as inertia carried Rolando forward and back, forward and back.
“No one will know,” the administrator pleaded through the shadows. “I promise you; I’ll never tell a soul. Just show me how to do it. Just this once.”
“Stand back,” Rolando heard his own voice call. It startled him.
Rolando kicked once, tried to judge the distance and account for the lower gravity as best as he could, and let go of the bar. He soared too far, but the strong composite mesh at the rear of the platform caught him, yieldingly, and he was able to grasp the side railing and stand erect before the young administrator could reach out and steady him.
“We both have a lot to learn,” said the Great Rolando. “Take off your jacket.”
For more than an hour the two men swung high through the silent shadowy air. Rolando tried nothing fancy, no leaps from one bar to another, no real acrobatics. It was tricky enough just landing gracefully on the platform in the strange lunar gravity.
The administrator did exactly as Rolando instructed him. For all his youth and desire to emulate a circus star, he was no daredevil. It satisfied him completely to swing side by side with the Great Rolando, to share the same platform.
“What made you come here tonight?” Rolando asked as they stood gasping sweatily on the platform between turns.
�
�The security robot reported your entry. Strictly routine, I get all such reports piped to my quarters. But I figured this was too good a chance to miss!”
Finally, soaked with perspiration, arms aching and fingers raw and cramping, they made their way down the ladder to the ground. Laughing.
“I’ll never forget this,” the administrator said. “It’s the high point of my life.”
“Mine, too,” said Rolando fervently. “Mine, too.”
Two days later the administrator came to the rocket terminal to see off the circus troupe. Taking Rolando and his wife to one side, he said in a low voice that brimmed with happiness, “You know, we’re starting to accept retired couples for permanent residence here at Moonbase.”
Rolando’s wife immediately responded, “Oh, I’m not ready to retire yet.”
“Nor I,” said Rolando. “I’ll stay with the circus for a few years more, I think. There might still be time for me to make a comeback.”
“Still,” said the administrator, “when you do want to retire . . .”
Mrs. Rolando smiled at him. “I’ve noticed that my face looks better in this lower gravity. I probably wouldn’t need a facelift if we come to live here.”
They laughed together.
The rest of the troupe was filing into the rocket that would take them back to Earth. Rolando gallantly held his wife’s arm as she stepped up the ramp and ducked through the hatch. Then he turned to the administrator and asked swiftly: “What you told me about gravity all those years ago—is it really true? It is really universal? There’s no way around it?”
“Afraid not,” the administrator answered. “Someday gravity will make the Sun collapse. It might even make the entire universe collapse.”
Rolando nodded, shook the man’s hand, then followed his wife to his seat inside the rocket’s passenger compartment. As he listened to the taped safety lecture and strapped on his safety belt he thought to himself: So gravity will get us all in the end.
Then he smiled grimly. But not yet. Not yet.
Of all the stories that were written about the first human flight to the Moon during science fiction’s “golden age” of the 1930s and ’40s (including Robert A. Heinlein’s script for the 1950 movie Destination Moon) not one author foresaw that the lunar landing would be televised back to Earth.
Television was not a common household fixture when those tales were written. By the time broadcast TV became as commonplace as commercial radio, the major science fiction authors had moved on to the other subjects: The first lunar landing was old-hat in science fiction circles.
When the first humans set foot on Mars, their landing will be transmitted back to Earth not only by television, but by virtual reality systems, so that people on Earth with the proper equipment will be able to see, feel, experience the thrill of setting foot on the red planet.
“Appointment in Sinai” is about that moment, and although the tale is told from several different viewpoints, it is really the story of astronaut Debbie Kettering, who was passed over for the Mars mission, and her eventual realization that, as the poet John Milton put it, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
APPOINTMENT IN SINAI
Houston
No, I am not going to plug in,” Debbie Kettering said firmly. “I’m much too busy.”
Her husband gave her his patented lazy smile. “Come on, Deb, you don’t have anything to do that can’t wait a half hour or so.”
His smile had always been her undoing. But this time she intended to stand firm. “No!” she insisted. “I won’t.”
She was not a small woman, but standing in their living room next to Doug made her look tiny. A stranger might think they were the school football hero and the cutest cheerleader on the squad, twenty years afterward. In reality, Doug was a propulsion engineer (a real rocket scientist) and Deborah an astronaut.
An ex-astronaut. Her resignation was on the computer screen in her bedroom office, ready to be e-mailed to her boss at the Johnson Space Center.
“What’ve you got to do that’s so blasted important?” Doug asked, still grinning at her as he headed for the sofa, his favorite Saturday afternoon haunt.
“A mountain of work that’s been accumulating for weeks,” Debbie answered. “Now’s the time to tackle it, while all the others are busy and won’t be able to bother me.”
His smile faded as he realized how miserable his wife really was. “Come on, Deb. We both know what’s eating you.”
“I won’t plug in, Doug.”
“Be a shame to miss it,” he insisted.
Suddenly she was close to tears. “Those bastards even rotated me off the shift. They don’t want me there!”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“No, Doug! They put everybody else in ahead of me. I’m on the bottom of their pecking order. So to hell with them! I won’t even watch it on TV. And that’s final!”
Los Angeles
“It’s all set up, man. All we need’s a guy who’s good with the ’lectronics. And that’s you, Chico.”
Luis Mendez shifted unhappily in his desk chair. Up at the front of the room Mr. Ricardo was trying to light up some enthusiasm in the class. Nobody was interested in algebra, though. Except Luis, but he had Jorge leaning over from the next desk, whispering in his ear.
Luis didn’t much like Jorge, not since first grade when Jorge used to beat him up at least once a week for his lunch money. The guy was dangerous. Now he was into coke and designer drugs and burglary to support his habit. And he wanted Luis to help him.
“I don’t do locks,” Luis whispered back, out of the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on Mr. Ricardo’s patient, earnest face.
“It’s all ’lectronics, man. You do one kind you can do the other. Don’t try to mess with me, Chico.”
“We’ll get caught. They’ll send us to Alcatraz.”
Jorge stifled a laugh. “I got a line on a whole friggin’ warehouse full of VR sets and you’re worryin’ about Alcatraz? Even if they sent you there you’d be livin’ better than here.”
Luis grimaced. Life in the ’hood was no picnic, but Alcatraz? More than once Mr. Ricardo had sorrowfully complained, “Maybe you bufóns would be better off in Alcatraz. At least there they make you learn.”
Yeah, Luis knew. They also fry your brains and turn you into a zombie.
“Hey.” Jorge jabbed at Luis’s shoulder. “I ain’t askin’ you, Chico. I’m tellin’ you. You’re gonna do the locks for me or you’re gonna be in the hospital. Comprende?”
Luis understood. Trying to fight against Jorge was useless. He had learned that lesson years ago. Better to do what Jorge wanted than to get a vicious beating.
Washington
Senator Theodore O’Hara fumed quietly as he rolled his powerchair down the long corridor to his office. The trio of aides trotting behind him were puffing too hard to speak; the only sound in the marble-walled corridor was the slight whir of the powerchair’s electric motor and the faint throb of the senator’s artificial heart pump. And obedient panting.
He leaned on the toggle to make the chair go a bit faster. Two of his aides fell behind but Kaiser, overweight and prematurely balding, broke into a sprint to keep up.
Fat little yes-man, O’Hara thought. Still, Kaiser was uncanny when it came to predicting trends. O’Hara scrupulously followed all the polls, as any politician must if he wants to stay in office. But when the polls said one thing and Kaiser something else, the tubby little butterball was inevitably right.
Chairman Pastorini had recessed the committee session so everybody could plug into the landing. Set aside the important business of the Senate Appropriations Committee, O’Hara grumbled to himself, so we can all see a half-dozen astronauts plant their gold-plated boots on Mars.
What a waste of time, he thought. And money.
It’s all Pastorini’s doing. He’s using the landing. Timed the damned committee session to meet just on this particular afternoon. Knew it all along. Thinks I�
��ll cave in because the other idiots on the committee are going to get all stirred up.
I’ll cave them in. All of them. This isn’t the first manned landing on Mars, he thought grimly. It’s the last.
Phoenix
Jerome Zacharias—Zack to everyone who knew him—paced nervously up and down the big room. Part library, part entertainment center, part bar, the room was packed with friends and well-wishers and media reporters who had made the trek to Phoenix to be with him at this historic moment.
They were drinking champagne already, Zack saw. Toasting our success. Speculating on what they’ll find on Mars.
But it could all fail, he knew. It could be a disaster. The last systems check before breaking orbit had shown that the lander’s damned fuel cells still weren’t charged up to full capacity. All right, the backups are okay, there’s plenty of redundancy, but it just takes one glitch to ruin everything. People have been killed in space and those kids are more than a hundred million miles from home.
If anything happens to them it’ll be my fault, Zack knew. They’re going to give me the credit if it all works out okay, but it’ll be my fault if they crash and burn.
Twenty years he’d sweated and schemed and connived with government leaders, industrial giants, bureaucrats of every stripe. All to get a team of twelve men and women to Mars.
For what? he asked himself, suddenly terrified that he had no real answer. To satisfy my own ego? Is that why? Spend all this money and time, change the lives of thousands of engineers and scientists and technicians and all their support people, just so I can go to my grave saying that I pushed the human race to Mars?
Suppose somebody gets killed? Then a truly wrenching thought hit him. Suppose they don’t find anything there that’s worth it all? Suppose Mars is just the empty ball of rusty sand and rocks that the unmanned landers have shown us? No life, not even traces of fossils?