Futures Past

by James White

  In those days there were no automatic controls or emergency cut-offs for the A-Drive. When the delicate balance of the coils that focused and accelerated the tremendous beam of ionized particles which powered the ship went out of alignment, and the defect could not be remedied, then nothing much could be done. The sweat broke on Gregg's back and forehead as he remembered it—the Drive going on the blink and beginning to deliver a wildly variable thrust when they were two-thirds of the way to Mars, the battering they'd taken from acceleration that was five G's one minute, two G's the next, and anything from one to ten G's the minute after that. For days they'd been stuck in wet and stinking spacesuits—the erratic acceleration was shaking the Allendyne apart, it leaked air in every section—navigating by sheer guesswork. If there'd been chemical motors to fall back on they could have limped home on those. But they had to rely on a cranky electronic drive or else drift until they starved to death. The number of spaceships in existence was still too few for there to be any hope of rescue.

  Somehow they had managed to kick themselves into an orbit around Mars. But when men from the station came to investigate, the Allendyne's captain was dead from internal injuries, and Gregg had so many organs displaced that his X-rays looked scarcely human.

  The medics did a good job on him though, and in the weightlessness of the Mars space station the badly strained heart mended itself and his displaced liver and etceteras worked themselves back into position—at least, so they had told him. But he had never joined another ship, though that was the only sort of life he wanted then—as engineer he felt to blame for the whole Allendyne mess. Instead he'd taken a construction job on Deimos, always being careful to avoid any sort of high-acceleration travel.

  The thought of high acceleration, and the memory of those three days of crushing, twisting pressure and the choking nausea, even after ten years, still made him feel like...

  "Are you sick or something?" The voice of Mercer beside him brought Gregg back to the present with a jolt. He rubbed sweat off his forehead with a hasty palm, and said quickly: "No, just banged my elbow. It's nothing."

  "Maybe I'd better have a look before we go out . . ." Mercer began.

  Gregg shook his head. "What happened to Captain Ferguson?" He wanted to change the subject.

  "I didn't see it myself," Mercer replied. "Allerton and I were off duty. I think he must have been helping me the way he usually does—you know, running out our retractable radar and communications gear in readiness for turnover. To get at my control panel more easily from his seat he'd undone all but one of his straps, the one around his middle. When the crash flung him against it, it must have cut him in two." He stopped talking as they reached the airlock. Giving Gregg's open helmet a slap he said: "Seal up!"

  So that was the aloof and awe-inspiring Captain Ferguson who had briefly shaken hands with him before takeoff, Gregg thought as he closed his face-plate. Not the near-godlike commander of a super ship, but instead a kindly human being who didn't mind doing part of a crewman's work for him. It had been a mistake, but there was an excuse for it.

  Due to the interference set up by the ship's A-Drive, radio communication of any sort was impossible while it was in operation. Radio checks and reports were made at turnover time—a period lasting usually half an hour— when the Drive was shut off and the ship swapped ends preparatory to begin decelerating on the second half of its journey. Turnover was a very busy time for the communications officer, because all the vital equipment that would later be used in landing had to be checked, as well as the routine reports transmitted to his destination. It was the only period during which the communications man worked, and then he worked hard. For the rest of the voyage there was nothing for him to do at all. That was the reason the Wallaby's radioman doubled as ship's medical officer.

  And even then, Gregg knew, Mercer's job was absurdly easy, requiring maybe six hours actual work per voyage. But when something like this turned up .. .

  "All tight?" Mercer's voice came suddenly through the helmet phones. Gregg nodded, and his suit creaked faintly as Mercer broke the outer seal of the lock and air pres- sure disappeared. He attached safety lines to Mercer and himself, moved the welder they'd be using into a handier position, and watched the port swing slowly open.

  Halfway open it stuck.

  Mercer looked at the port as if he couldn't believe his eyes. He pushed at it with his hands, then braced himself and shoved with both feet. Looking suddenly worried he wriggled his head and shoulders through the narrow opening. Over the phones Gregg heard a sharply indrawn breath, then Mercer's waist and legs followed his head and shoulders through the opening.

  When nothing had happened for what to Gregg seemed a very long time, he said testily: "I'm still here, you know."

  "Uh, I forgot." The voice was barely recognizable as Mercer's. After a pause it went on: "I'll give you a hand out. And you can leave the welder, we don't need it."

  When Gregg had his foot magnets anchored firmly on the outer hull and had taken a look around, he saw what Mercer meant about not needing the welder. He found himself giggling suddenly, and shut his jaws with a snap.

  What they needed was a new outer hull.

  Every inch that he could see was covered with deep jagged-edged scratches, all running in the fore and aft direction. Some of the scratches were nearly an inch deep, and when one of these intersected a join in the hull plating, the metal was wrinkled and buckled like so much tinfoil. A few yards from Gregg, something that had once been a forty-foot retractable antenna system was nothing but a mangled stump that poked like some alien, metallic flower from its recess. Of the sliding panels which had covered it in its retracted position there was no sign at all; Gregg supposed they'd been torn away. But the ship's great, triangular gliding wings with their razor sharp leading edges seemed to have escaped damage completely. The stabilizing fins were in one piece, too.

  Gregg gazed about him with the objective curiosity which the dreamer brings to bear on a particularly horrible nightmare—when he is lucky enough to be aware that he is dreaming. This was impossible. No meteorite could damage a hull in this way; nothing he knew of could do it. Gregg swallowed and said as much to Mercer.

  "Just under the skin is the most vulnerable spot," the radioman said softly, apparently talking to himself. Gregg wondered briefly whether it was the communications or medical half of the officer doing the talking, and if Mercer as well as Peterson had banged his head in the collision. He didn't like the sound of the radioman's voice, and the look in the other's eyes made him distinctly uneasy.

  Mercer straightened. "I'd better check anyway," he said in the same toneless voice, and began sliding his magnetized boots over the hull toward the stern. Gregg followed.

  By some miracle the outside extensions of the A-Drive were undamaged, so also was the chemically fueled landing motor. Mercer and himself worked slowly from the stern forwards, examining every bent and buckled plate— and the wiring under them if it was visible. Mercer said very little, and Gregg didn't feel as if he was being any help at all. What was biting the other anyway?

  At the bow, a few strands of steel wire deeply embedded in the plating told them the nature of the "meteor" that had struck the ship. Some unknown ship at a time also unknown had lost its cargo net. The Wallaby had found it.

  Mercer became quieter than ever.

  In an effort to get a little conversation going Gregg said: "This is going to be a big loss to the company, isn't it? I mean, it would be cheaper to build a new ship than to repair this one. Luckily there's nothing wrong with our Drive or fuel tanks, though, or the controls. They'll be able to salvage those . . ." Gregg's attempt at conversation died and he felt his ears and face getting hot with embarrassment. Then he began to feel angry.

  Mercer was looking at him, not saying anything. The look was of such withering scorn that Gregg felt like a child—and he hadn't been very bright as a child. Gregg didn't deserve a look like that from anybody. He was no tourist; he'd been s
pace personnel once himself, the same as Mercer. He gritted his teeth in sheer rage and frustration. If there'd been enough air to support life outside his suit, there would have been a lovely fight under way just about now.

  Mercer broke the silence at last.

  "Will you please stop yapping about company losses and repair costs—you've no idea just how important I don't consider them. Look around you. Use the thing you call a brain as well as your eyes. Look there!" He indicated the Wallaby's once-sharp prow, now blunted and buckled, and with a tangle of wiring and small components oozing from between the damaged plating. "And there!" Mercer's finger pointed to the direct vision ports, then quickly to another section of the ship. "Can't you see that—"

  "We're knocked about a bit, certainly," Gregg broke in angrily. "But that will be easily fixed on Earth. I certainly don't see why you're so blasted sarcastic about it."

  "No, you don't see," Mercer said, and cursed. It wasn't a very bad swear-word, but Gregg had never heard any syllable used with such awful intensity. Then the radioman's manner changed abruptly and he went on: "Space accidents are funny things, Mr. Gregg. At the time they happen it isn't always possible to tell how serious they are. Take this case, for instance.

  "This ship is a total loss—with all hands."

  As he moved toward the half-open airlock, he added self-consciously, "Er, sorry if I was impolite back there, Mr. Gregg ..."

  Nine men were packed into the Wallaby's tiny control room—the ship's full crew and Gregg—but the situation was too serious for anyone to see anything humorous in that ludicrous tangle of bodies. Mercer had just finished reporting his findings for the second time. Nobody had anything to say.

  "On the face of it this looks hopeless," Allerton said at last. "But if there's a solution, we've got to find it now— or at least during the next couple of hours. Any ideas, please? Quickly." He was almost pleading with them.

  Ever since Mercer had told him that the passengers and crew of the Wallaby were as good as dead, Gregg had been feeling more confused than frightened. At first he had thought Mercer guilty of a joke in rather poor taste, but the grim faces of the crew told him that they took the radioman's report seriously enough. But it seemed so silly. How could a ship be lost when it hadn't a single leak and it was fully powered and manned?

  Nobody was talking now, anyway. Gregg cleared his throat and said awkwardly, "I don't understand this. Why are things hopeless, and why are the next couple of hours important? We've light, air, power—"

  "But we've no radio!" Mercer interrupted, angry impatience at this seeming stupidity putting a hard edge on his voice.

  "I don't see—"

  "Listen!" Mercer said. "You know what hit us. You saw the piece of cargo netting embedded in the nose, and the state the outer hull is in. But just so's you'll understand fully what happened, I'll tell you the whole sad story from the beginning—then maybe you'll be able to suggest something helpful..."

  Gregg felt his ears beginning to burn again. Why did Mercer always make him feel about six years old? The radioman's words were polite enough, but the way he said them made it very plain that he considered Gregg a hindrance, if anything.

  With an effort Gregg forced down his rising anger. Maybe it wasn't Mercer's fault; maybe it was himself who was being too touchy. It was downright stupid of him to expect the niceties of polite conversation from everybody at a time like this; he must look an awful stuffed shirt to them. Gregg tried to absorb the information content of the words, and not their tone, as Mercer continued:

  "About an hour ago this ship hit—and ran through—a cargo net belonging to another ship. A cargo net is made of fine steel cable, highly flexible, and is anything up to three hundred square yards in area. It's used for transporting cargo on the outside of a ship's hull when the ship in question doesn't intend landing on a planet where air resistance would make streamlining necessary. A ship doesn't often lose its cargo net, but overloading, a sudden change of acceleration, or faulty fastening has been known to cause one to tear free of its ship. When this happens, the springy net opens out to its full area, forming a rare but very dangerous menace to navigation. So rare that we are the first to find out how deadly a menace it is."

  Everyone knew all this, of course; but they listened closely. The simple statement of the problem facing them might suggest some line of attack which would never occur to them through dividing it up into highly technical and specialized pigeonholes. Gregg hoped so anyway.

  "Traveling at a velocity relatively small with respect to ours—any greater and we'd not be talking about it now— this man-made meteor hit us and went past.

  "It practically sandpapered us flat."

  Mercer took a deep breath and let it out by his nose. As radioman, this was the part which affected him most strongly. He continued: "Our retractable radio gear had been run out at the time, ready for use when the Drive shut down during turnover, and for general testing. It was ripped away. All of it.

  "The approach and landing radar, the fore and aft vision pickups, and the radio-altimeter and air-speed indicator—all of which were set more or less flush with the outer skin—are now heavily abraded junk. We can't call for help. We can't see to land. And if we were stupid enough to try landing blind, we can't have a "talk-down" because we've no receiver. We're deaf, dumb, and blind —completely blind, because the direct vision ports are so badly scratched we can't see through them.

  "And don't ask about safety devices and alternative circuits," Mercer anticipated as Gregg opened his mouth to put exactly that question. "The ship has them, all right, but they were under the outer skin, too. You know, this ship could have taken any ordinary collision—it could have as many punctures as a sieve—and still remain fully operable. But this was no ordinary collision. Instead of knocking a hole in us the way a meteor is supposed to, this one peeled us like an orange.

  "The circuits which haven't been completely ruined are in such a mess that it would take weeks to salvage anything usable from them, and then building a transmitter while wearing a spacesuit is practically impossible. But we haven't got weeks, we've only a few hours—"

  "But why a few hours?" Gregg interrupted. He was beginning to realize the full extent of the disaster, but surely somebody would be able to think of something, given time. The ship was only halfway between Mars and Earth. What was the big rush?

  "Our course has been pre-set and timed," Mercer explained patiently. "Two-and-a-half G's acceleration from Mars to turnover point, then half-an-hour for swapping ends and general checking up, followed by two-and-a-half G's deceleration to Earth. Once every five hours, acceleration is cut to one* G to allow for natural functions, but that has been precalculated, too. That means we have to stick closely to our flight plan if we want to reach Earth in our present blinded state."

  Mercer glanced quickly at his watch, then went on: "But the premature shutting down of the Drive when we hit the net upset the calculations—acceleration ceased approximately two hours earlier than expected. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, deceleration must be delayed by exactly the same time. In effect this means that the usual half hour turnover period is extended to a little under six hours, and two of those are gone already.

  "A method of landing the ship must be found within the four hours of weightless flight remaining before deceleration begins, because we can't do a thing during it but lie down, and when we arrive there won't be time to think or do anything." Mercer's mouth went through the motions of smiling, but his heart wasn't in it. "Add to that the fact of gradually mounting radioactivity in Storage Four —caused by the collision scattering the lead shielding bricks around the shipment of Mars-produced synthetic isotopes—which will not rise to fatal intensity if we can land and get away from this ship on time.

  "That, Mr. Gregg, is the reason for all the rush."

  Gregg wasn't really on a crippled ship, listening to a crew who intended flying her blindfolded into a planet. It was silly, he told himself desperately;
things like that didn't happen. But there was an ache in his stomach that wasn't from hunger, and the room temperature had nothing to do with the cold sweat that prickled suddenly on his forehead and back. This was true all right, and he'd just thought of something else ...

  The Wallaby might follow its precalculated course, but would the Earth be waiting at the end of it? In six hours Earth would have moved a considerable distance along her orbit, and—Gregg felt his throat go dry at the thought —supposing the planet's orbital motion was toward them. They'd smash right into it.

  Faces became even more white and strained as he relayed that thought to the others in the room. They hadn't thought of that.

  Allerton reached for a scratch pad and began doing some hasty calculations. Finished, he looked up and said: "It's all right. We'll be overtaking the Earth in its orbit, so the six-hour delay will mean that we come to rest a couple of thousand miles short. We can use the extra elbow room.

  "But," he ended, his voice cutting sharply through the general sigh of relief, "We've still got to land, remember."

  "Let's stop trying to fool ourselves," said a voice suddenly. It sounded, Gregg thought, like the engineer, Peterson. "We can't possibly land, and you, as pilot, know that better than any of us. We're dead ducks, the lot of us, and the sooner we admit it to ourselves the better."

  Allerton didn't reply, but sat staring down at his hands.. Several others in the room nodded their heads.

  They all agreed with him.

  "What's the matter with you all?" Gregg burst out, fear as well as anger sending his voice up in pitch. "You can't just give in like this. There must be something ..." An idea hit him suddenly. "What about the suit radios? And —and couldn't we circle Earth under power? The flare from the A-Drive would certainly be seen, and somebody would want to investigate—"

  "But we can't see the Earth to circle it," Mercer interrupted harshly. "And there's the radioactivity, remember. We can't hang around until someone gets curious, we'd be dead by that time. I tell you it's hopeless."