Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

  James TIPTREE JR.

  The most notable story is again an investigation into the gulf between the sexes. "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" won both the Hugo (in a tie with Spider Robinson's "By Any Other Name") and Nebula awards as the best novella published in 1976. In it a crew of three American astronauts are caught up in an intense solar storm which apparently propels them through a time vortex into a world several hundred years into their future. A devastating plague has reduced the human population to just a few thousand, all female, whose only means of reproduction is the cloning of several basic genome types.

  James TIPTREE, JR.

  "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"

  Lorimer gazes around the big crowded cabin, trying to listen to the voices, trying also to ignore the twitch,, in his insides that means he is about to remember something bad. No help; he lives it again, that long ago moment. Himself running blindly – or was he pushed?-into the strange toilet at Evanston Junior High. His fly open, his dick in his hand, he can still see the grey zipper edge of his jeans around his pale exposed pecker. The hush. The sickening wrongness of shapes, faces turning. The first blaring giggle. Girls. He was in the girls' can.

  He flinches wryly now, so many years later, not looking at the women's faces. The cabin curves around over his head surrounding him with their alien things: the beading rack, the twins' loom, Andy's leather work, the damned kudzu vine wriggling everywhere, the chickens. So cosy… Trapped, he is. Irretrievably trapped for life in everything he does not enjoy. Strutturelessness. Personal trivia, unmeaning intimacies. The claims he can somehow never meet. Ginny: You never talk to me… Ginny, love, he thinks involuntarily. The hurt doesn't come.

  Bud Geirr's loud chuckle breaks in on him. Bud is joking with some of them, out of sight around a bulkhead. Dave is visible, though. Major Norman Davis on the far side of the cabin, his bearded profile bent toward a small dark woman Lorimer can't quite focus on. But Dave's head seems oddly tiny and sharp, in fact the whole cabin looks unreal. A cackle bursts out from the "ceiling"-the bantam hen in her basket.

  At this moment Lorimer becomes sure he has been drugged.

  Curiously, the idea does not anger him. He leans or rather tips back, perching cross-legged in the zero gee, letting his gaze go to the face of the woman he has been talking with. Connie. Constantia Morelos. A tall moonfaced woman in capacious green pajamas. He has never really cared for talking to women. Ironic.

  "I suppose," he says aloud, "it's possible that in some sense we are not here."

  That doesn't sound too clear, but she nods interestedly. She's watching my reactions, Lorimer tells himself. Women are natural poisoners. Has he said that aloud too? Her expression doesn't change. His vision is taking on a pleasing local clarity. Connie's skin strikes him as quite fine, healthy-looking. Olive tan even after two years in space. She was a farmer, he recalls. Big pores, but without the caked look he associates with women her age.

  "You probably never wore make-up," he says. She looks puzzled. "Face paint, powder. None of you have."

  "Oh!" Her smile shows a chipped front tooth. "Oh yes, I think Andy has."

  "Andy?"

  "For plays. Historical plays, Andy's good at that."

  "Of course. Historical plays."

  Lorimer's brain seems to be expanding, letting in light. He is understanding actively now, the myriad bits and pieces linking into pattern. Deadly patterns, he perceives; but the drug is shielding him in some way. Like an amphetamine high without the pressure. Maybe it's something they use socially? No, they're watching, too.

  "Space bunnies, I still don't dig it," Bud Geirr laughs infectiously. He has a friendly buoyant voice people like; Lorimer still likes it after two years.

  "You chicks have kids back home, what do your folks think about you flying around out here with old Andy, h'mm?" Bud floats into view, his arm draped around a twin's shoulders. The one called Judy Paris, Lorimer decides; the twins are hard to tell. She drifts passively at an angle to Bud's big body: a jut-breasted plain girl in flowing yellow pajamas, her black hair raying out. Andy's read head swims up to them. He is holding a big green spaceball, looking about sixteen.

  "Old Andy." Bud shakes his head, his grin flashing, under his thick dark mustache. "When I was your age-.: folks didn't let their women fly around with me."

  Connie's lips quirk faintly. In Lorimer's head the pieces slide toward pattern. I know, he thinks. Do you. know I know? His head is vast and crystalline, very nice really. Easier to think. Women… No compact generalization forms in his mind, only a few speaking;f faces on a matrix of pervasive irrelevance. Human, of course. Biological necessity. Only so, so… diffuse? Pointless?… His sister Amy, soprano con tremolo: `50f course women could contribute as much as men if you'd treat us as equals. You'll see!" And then marrying that idiot the second time. Well, now he., can see.

  "Kudzu vines," he says aloud. Connie smiles. How they all smile.

  "How 'boot that?" Bud says happily. "Ever think j we'd see chicks in zero gee, hey, Dave? Artits-stico. Woo-ee!" Across the cabin Dave's bearded head turns to him, not smiling.

  "And of Andy's had it all to his self. Stunt your, growth, lad." He punches Andy genially on the arm, Andy catches himself on the bulkhead. But can't be drunk, Lorimer thinks; not on that fruit cider. But he doesn't usually sound so much like a stage Texan either. A drug.

  "Hey, no offense," Bud is saying earnestly to the boy, "I mean that. You have to forgive one underprilly, underprivileged, brother. These chicks are good people. Know what?" he tells the girl, "You could look stupendous if you fix yourself up a speck. Hey, I can show you, old Buddy's a expert. I hope you don't mind my saying that. As a matter of fact you look real stupendous to me right now."

  He hugs her shoulders, flings out his arm and hugs Andy too. They float upward in his grasp, Judy grinning excitedly, almost pretty.

  "Let's get some more of that good stuff." Bud propels them both toward the serving rack which is decorated for the occasion with sprays of greens and small real daisies.

  "Happy New Year! Hey, Happy New Year, y'all!"

  Faces turn, more smiles. Genuine smiles, Lorimer thinks, maybe they really like their new years. He feels he has infinite time to examine every event, the implications evolving in crystal facets. I'm an echo chamber. Enjoyable, to be the observer. But others are observing too. They've started something here. Do they realize? So vulnerable, three of us, five of them in this fragile ship. They don't know. A dread unconnected to action lurks behind his mind.

  "By god we made it," Bud laughs. "You space chickies, I have to give it to you. I commend you, by god I say it. We wouldn't be here, wherever we are. Know what, I jus' might decide to stay in the service after all. Think they have room for old Bud in your space program, sweetie?"

  "Knock that off, Bud," Dave says quietly from the far wall. "I don't want to hear us use the name of the Creator like that." The full chestnut beard gives him a patriarchal gravity. Dave is forty-six, a decade older than Bud and Lorimer. Veteran of six successful missions.

  "Oh my apologies, Major Dave old buddy." Bud chuckles intimately to the girl. "Our commanding ossifer. Stupendous guy. Hey, Doc!" he calls. "How's your attitude? You making out dinko?"

  "Cheers," Lorimer hears his voice reply, the complex stratum of his feelings about Bud rising like a kraken in the moonlight of his mind. The submerged silent thing he has about them all, all the Buds and Daves and big, indomitable, cheerful, able, disciplined, slow-minded mesomorphs he has cast his life with. Meso-ectos, he corrected himself; astronauts aren't muscleheads. They like him, he has been careful about that. Liked him well enough to get him on Sunbird, to
make him the official scientist on the first circumsolar mission. That little Doc Lorimer, he's cool, he's on the team. No shit from Lorimer, not like those other scientific assholes. He does the bit well with his small neat build and his deadpan remarks. And the years of turning out for the bowling, the volleyball, the tennis, the skeet, the skiiing that broke his ankle, the touch football that broke his collarbone. Watch that Doc, he's a sneaky one. And the big men banging him on the back, accepting him. Their token scientist… The trouble is, he isn't any kind of scientist any more. Living off his postdoctoral plasma work, a lucky hit. He hasn't really been into the math for years, he isn't up to it now. Too many other interests, too much time spent explaining elementary stuff. I'm a half-jock, he thinks. A foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier and I'd be just like them. One of them. An alpha. They probably sense it underneath, the beta bile. Had the jokes worn a shade thin in Sunbird, all that year going out? A year of Bud and Dave playing gin. That damn exercycle, gearing it up too tough for me. They didn't mean it, though. We were a team.

  The memory of gaping jeans flicks at him, the painful end part the grinning faces waiting for him when he stumbled out. The howls, the dribble down his leg. Being cool, pretending to laugh too. You shit heads, I'll show you. 1 am not a girl.

  Bud's voice rings out, chanting "And a hap-pee New Year to you all down there!" Parody of the oily NASA tone. "Hey, why don't we shoot'em a signal? Greetings to all you Earthlings, I mean, all you little Lunies. Hap-py New Year in the good year whatsis." He snuffles comically. "There is a Santy Claus, Houston, ye-ew nevah saw nothin' like this! Houston, wherever you are," he sings out. "Hey, Houston! Do you read?"

  In the silence Lorimer sees Dave's face set into Major Norman Davis, commanding.

  And without warning he is suddenly back there, back a year ago in the cramped, shook-up command module of Sunbird, coming out from behind the sun. It's the drug doing this, he thinks as memory closes around him, it's so real. Stop. He tries to hang onto reality, to the sense of trouble building underneath.

  – But he can't, he is there, hovering behind Dave and Bud in the triple couches, as usual avoiding his official station in the middle, seeing beside them their reflections against blackness in the useless port window. The outer layer has been annealed, he can just make out a bright smear that has to be Spica floating through the image of Dave's head, making the bandage look like a kid's crown.

  "Houston, Houston, Sunbird," Dave repeats; "Sunbird calling Houston. Houston, do you read? Come in, Houston."

  The minutes start by. They are giving it seven out, seven back; seventy-eight million miles, ample margin.

  "The high gain's shot, that's what it is," Bud says cheerfully. He says it almost every day.

  "No way." Dave's voice is patient, also as usual. "It checks out. Still too much crap from the sun, isn't that right, Doc?"

  "The residual radiation from the flare is just about in line with us," Lorimer says. "They could have a hard time sorting us out." For the thousandth time he registers his own faint, ridiculous gratification at being consulted.

  "Shit, we're outside Mercury." Bud shakes his head. "How we gonna find out who won the Series?"

  He often says that too. A ritual, out here in eternal night. Lorimer watches the sparkle of Spica drift by the reflection of Bud's curly face-bush. His own whiskers are scant and scraggly, like a blond Fu Manchu. In the aft corner of the window is a striped glare that must be the remains of their port energy accumulators, fried off in the solar explosion that hit them a month ago and fused the outer layers of their windows. That was when Dave cut his head open on the sexlogic panel. Lorimer had been banged in among the gravity wave experiment, he still doesn't trust the readings. Luckily the particle stream has missed one piece of the front window; they still have about twenty degrees of clear vision straight ahead. The brilliant web of the Pleiades shows there, running off into a blur of light.

  Twelve minutes… thirteen. The speaker sighs and clicks emptily. Fourteen. Nothing.

  "Sunbird to Houston, Sunbird to Houston. Come in, Houston. Sunbird out." Dave puts the mike back in its holder. "Give it another twenty-four."

  They wait ritually. Tomorrow Packard will reply Maybe.

  "Be good to see old Earth again," Bud remarks.

  "We're not using any more fuel on attitude," Dave reminds him. "I trust Doc's figures."

  It's not my figures, it's the elementary facts of celestial mechanics, Lorimer thinks; in October there's only one place for Earth to be. He never says it. Not to a man who can fly two-body solutions by intuition once he knows where the bodies are. Bud is a good pilot and a better engineer; Dave is the best there is. He takes no pride in it. "The Lord helps us, Doc, if we let Him."

  "Going to be a bitch docking if the radar's screwed up," Bud says idly. They all think about that for the hundredth time. It will be a bitch. Dave will do it. That was why he is hoarding fuel.

  The minutes tick off.

  "That's it," Dave says-and a voice fills the cabin, shockingly.

  "Judy?" It is high and clear. A girl's voice. "Judy, I'm so glad we got you. What are you doing on this band?"

  Bud blows out his breath; there is a frozen instant before Dave snatches up the mike.

  "Sunbird, we read you. This is Mission Sunbird calling Houston, ah, Sunbird One calling Houston Ground Control. Identify, who are you? Can you relay our signal? Over."

  "Some skip," Bud says. "Some incredible ham."

  "Are you in trouble, Judy?" the girl's voice asks. "I can't hear, you sound terrible. Wait a minute."

  "This is United States Space Mission Sunbird One," Dave repeats. "Mission Sunbird calling Houston Space Center. You are dee-exxing our channel. Identify, repeat identify yourself and say if you can relay to Houston. Over."

  "Dinko, Judy, try it again," the girl says.

  Lorimer abruptly pushes himself up to the Lurp, the Long-Range Particle Density Cumulator experiment, and activates its shaft motor. The shaft whines, jars; lucky it was retracted during the flare, lucky it hasn't fused shut. He sets the probe pulse on mar and begins a rough manual scan.

  "You are intercepting official traffic from the United States space mission to Houston Control," Dave is saying forcefully. "If you cannot relay to Houston get off the air, you are committing a federal offense. Say again, can you relay our signal to Houston Space Center? Over."

  "You still sound terrible," the girl says. "What's Houston? Who's talking, anyway? You know we don't have much time." Her voice is sweet but very nasal.

  "Jesus, that's close," Bud says. "That is close."

  "Hold it." Dave twists around to Lorimer's improvised radarscope.

  "There." Lorimer points out a tiny stable peak at the extreme edge of the read-out slot, in the transcoronal scatter. Bud cranes too.

  "A bogey!"

  "Somebody else out here."

  "Hello, hello? We have you now," the girl says.

  "Why are you so far out? Are you dinko, did you catch the flare?"

  "Hold it," warns Dave. "What's the status, Doc?"

  "Over three hundred thousand kilometers, guesstimated. Possibly headed away from us, going around the sun. Could be cosmonauts, a Soviet mission?"

  "Out to beat us. They missed."

  "With a girl?" Bud objects.

  "They've done that. You taping this, Bud?"

  "Roger-r-r." He grins. "That sure didn't sound like a Russky chic. Who the hell's Judy?"

  Dave thinks for a second, clicks on the mike. "This is Major Norman Davis commanding Unhed States spacecraft Sunbird One. We have you on scope. Request you identify yourself. Repeat, who are you? Over."

  "Judy, stop joking," the voice complains. "We'll lose you in a minute, don't you realize we worried about you?"

  "Sunbird to unidentified craft. This is not Judy. I say again, this is not Judy. Who are you? Over."

  "What--' the girl says, and is cut off by someone else saying, "Wait a minute, Ann." The speaker squeals. Then a differe
nt woman says, "This is Loma Bethune in Escondita. What is going on here?"

  "This is Major Davis commanding United States Mission Sunbird on course for Earth. We do not recognize any spacecraft Escondita. Will you identify yourself? Over."

  "I just did." She sounds older, with the same nasal drawl. "There is no spaceship Sunbird and you're not on course for Earth. If this is an andy joke it isn't any good."

  "This is no joke, madam!" Dave explodes. "This is the American circumsolar mission and we are American astronauts. We do not appreciate your interference. Out."

  The woman starts to speak and is drowned in a jibber of, static. Two voices come through briefly. Lorimer tinks he hears the words "Sunbird program" and something else. Bud works the squelcher; the interference subsides to a drone.

  "Ali, Major Davis?" the voice is fainter. "Did I hear you say you are on course for Earth?"

  Dave frowns at the speaker and then says curtly, "Affirmative."

  "Well, we don't understand your orbit. You must have very unusual flight characteristics, our readings show you won't node with anything on your present course. We'll lose the signal in a minute or two. Ali, would you tell us where you see Earth now? Never mind the coordinates, just tell us the constellation."

  Dave hesitates and then holds up the mike. "Doc."

  "Earth's apparent position is in Pisces," Lorimer says to the voice. "Approximately three degrees from P. Gamma."

  "It is not," the woman says. "Can't you see it's in Virgo? Can't you see out at all?"

  Lorimer's eyes go to the bright smear in the port window. "We sustained some damage-"

  "Hold it," snaps Dave.

  "- to one window during a disturbance we ran into at perihelion. Naturally we know the relative direction of Earth on this date, October nineteen."

  "October? It's March, March fifteen. You must-!' Her voice is lost in a shriek.

  "E-M front," Bud says, tuning. They are all leaning at the speaker from different angles, Lorimer is headdown. Space-noise wails and crashes like surf, the strange ship is too close to the coronal horizon. "-Behind you," they hear. More howls. "Band, try ship… if you can, you signal-" Nothing more comes through.