Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  And why wasn’t the rocket already firing? If the ship was being pushed off course, the autopilot should be fighting back. The accelerometer was in good order. It had looked fine when I made my inspection tour down the access tube.

  Could something be pushing on the ship and on the accelerometer, but not on me?

  It came down to the same impossibility. Something that could reach through a General Products hull.

  To hell with theory, said I to myself, said I. I’m getting out of here. To the dictaphone I said, “The pull has increased dangerously. I’m going to try to alter my orbit.”

  Of course, once I turned the ship outward and used the rocket, I’d be adding my own acceleration to the X force. It would be a strain, but I could stand it for a while. If I came within a mile of BVS-1, I’d end like Sonya Laskin.

  She must have waited face down in a net like mine, waited without a drive unit, waited while the pressure rose and the net cut into her iesh, waited until the net snapped and dropped her into the nose, to lie crushed and broken until the X force tore the very chairs loose and dropped them on her.

  I hit the gyros.

  The gyros weren’t strong enough to turn me. I tried it three times. Each time the ship rotated about fifty degrees and hung there, motionless, while the whine of the gyros went up and up. Released, the ship immediately swung back to position. I was nose down to the neutron star, and I was going to stay that way.

  * * * *

  Half an hour to fall, and the X force was over a gee. My sinuses were in agony. My eyes were ripe and ready to fall out. I don’t know if I could have stood a cigarette, hut I didn’t get the chance. My pack of Fortunados had fallen out of my pocket, when I dropped into the nose. There it was, four feet beyond my fingers, proof that the X force acted on other objects besides me. Fascinating.

  I couldn’t take any more. If it dropped me shrieking into the neutron star, I had to use the drive. And I did. I ran the thrust up until I was approximately in free fall. The blood which had pooled in my extremities went back where it belonged. The gee dial registered one point two gee. I cursed it for a lying robot.

  The soft-pack was bobbing around in the nose, and it occurred to me that a little extra nudge on the throttle would bring it to me. I tried it. The pack drifted toward me, and I reached, and like a sentient thing it speeded up to avoid my clutching hand. I snatched at it again as it went past my ear, but again it was moving too fast. That pack was going at a hell of a clip, considering that here I was, practically in free fall. It dropped through the door to the relaxation room, still picking up speed, blurred and vanished as it entered the access tube. Seconds later I heard a solid Thump.

  But that was crazy. Already the X force was pulling blood into my face. I pulled my lighter out, held it at arm’s length and let go. It fell gently into the nose. But the pack of Fortunados had hit like I’d dropped it from a building.

  Well.

  I nudged the throttle again. The mutter of fusing hydrogen reminded me that if I tried to keep this up all the way, I might well put the General Products hull to its toughest test yet: smashing it into a neutron star at half lightspeed. I could see it now: a transparent hull containing only a few cubic inches of dwarf star matter wedged into the tip of the nose.

  At one point four gee, according to that lying gee dial, the lighter came loose and drifted toward me. I let it go. It was clearly falling when it reached the doorway. I pulled the throttle back. The loss of power jerked me violently forward, but I kept my face turned. The lighter slowed and hesitated at the entrance to the access tube. Decided to go through. I cocked my ears for the sound, then jumped as the whole ship rang like a gong.

  And the accelerometer was right at the ship’s center of mass. Otherwise the ship’s mass would have thrown the needle off. The puppeteers were fiends for ten-decimal-point accuracy.

  I favored the dictaphone with a few fast comments, then got to work reprogramming the autopilot. Luckily what I wanted was simple. The X force was but an X force to me, but now I knew how it behaved. I might actually live through this.

  * * * *

  The stars were fiercely blue, warped to streaked lines near that special point. I thought I could see it now, very small and dim and red; but it might have been imagination. In twenty minutes, I’d be rounding the neutron star. The drive grumbled behind me. In effective free fall, I unfastened the safety net and pushed myself out of the chair.

  A gentle push aft—and ghostly hands grasped my legs. Ten pounds of weight hung by my fingers from the back of the chair. The pressure should drop fast. I’d programmed the autopilot to reduce the thrust from two gees to zero during the next two minutes. All I had to do was be at the center of mass, in the access tube, when the thrust went to zero.

  Something gripped the ship through a General Products hull. A psychokinetic life form stranded on a sun twelve miles in diameter? But how could anything alive stand such gravity?

  Something might be stranded in orbit. There is life in space: outsiders and sailseeds and maybe others we haven’t found yet. For all I knew or cared, BVS-1 itself might be alive. It didn’t matter. I knew what the X force was trying to do. It was trying to pull the ship apart.

  There was no pull on my fingers. I pushed aft and landed on the back wall, on bent legs. I knelt over the door, looking aft/down. When free fall came, I pulled myself through and was in the relaxation room looking down/forward into the nose.

  Gravity was changing faster than I liked. The X force was growing as zero hour approached, while the compensating rocket thrust dropped. The X force tended to pull the ship apart; it was two gee forward at the nose, two gee backward at the tail and diminished to zero at the center of mass. Or so I hoped. The pack and lighter had behaved as if the force pulling them had increased for every inch they moved sternward.

  The dictaphone was fifty feet below, utterly unreachable. If I had anything more to say to General Products, I’d have to say it in person. Maybe I’d get the chance. Because I knew what force was trying to tear the ship apart.

  It was the tide.

  * * * *

  The motor was off, and I was at the ship’s midpoint. My spread-eagled position was getting uncomfortable. It was four minutes to perihelion.

  Something creaked in the cabin below me. I couldn’t see what it was, but I could clearly see a red point glaring among blue radial lines, like a lantern at the bottom of a well. To the sides, between the fusion tube and the tanks and other equipment, the blue stars glared at me with a light that was almost violet. I was afraid to look too long. I actually thought they might blind me.

  There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even feel the pressure change. The air was thin at this height, one hundred and fifty feet above the control room.

  And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disc leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; and I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants’ hands gripped my arms and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He’d made the same guesses I had, and he’d tried to hide in the access tube. But he’d slipped. As I was slipping…

  When I got my eyes open the red dot was shrinking into nothing.

  IV

  The puppeteer president insisted I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn’t fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached like I’d been beaten. Rest and tender loving care, that’s what I wanted.

  I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression.

  “What can get through a General Products hull?” I asked it.

  “I hoped you would tell me.” The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick that gave off green, incense-smelling smoke.

  “And so I will. Gravity.”

  “Do not
play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital.”

  “I’m not playing. Does your world have a moon?”

  “That information is classified.” The puppeteers are cowards. Nobody knows where they come from, and nobody is likely to find out.

  “Do you know what happens when a moon gets too close to its primary?”

  “It falls apart.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Tides.”

  “What is a tide?”

  Oho, said I to myself, said I. “I’m going to try to tell you. The Earth’s moon is almost two thousand miles in diameter and does not rotate with respect to Earth. I want you to pick two rocks on the Moon, one at the point nearest the Earth, one at the point furthest away.”

  “Very well.”

  “Now, isn’t it obvious that if those rocks were left to themselves they’d fall away from each other? They’re in two different orbits, mind you, concentric orbits, one almost two thousand miles outside the other. Yet those rocks are forced to move at the same orbital speed.”

  “The one outside is moving faster.”

  “Good point. So there is a force trying to pull the Moon apart. Gravity holds it together. Bring the Moon close enough to Earth, and those two rocks would simply float away.”

  “I see. Then this tide tried to pull your ship apart. It was powerful enough in the lifesystem of the Institute ship to pull the acceleration chairs out of their mounts.”

  “And to crush a human being. Picture it. The ship’s nose was just seven miles from the center of BVS-1. The tail was three hundred feet further out. Left to themselves they’d have gone in completely different orbits. My head and feet tried to do the same thing, when I got close enough.”

  “I see. Are you moulting?”

  “What?”

  “I noticed you are losing your outer integument in spots.”

  “Oh, that. I got a bad sunburn from exposure to starlight.”

  Two heads stared at each other for an eyeblink. A shrug? The puppeteer said, “We have deposited the remainder of your pay with the Bank of We Made It. One Sigmund Ausfaller, human, has frozen the account until your taxes are computed.”

  “Figures.”

  “If you will talk to reporters now, explaining what happened to the Institute ship, we will pay you ten thousand stars. We will pay cash so that you may use it immediately. It is urgent. There have been rumors.”

  “Bring ’em in.” As an afterthought I added, “I can also tell them that your world is moonless. That should be good for a footnote somewhere.”

  “I do not understand.” But two long necks had drawn back, and the puppeteer was watching me like a pair of pythons.

  “You’d know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn’t avoid it.”

  “Would you be interested in…”

  “… a million stars? I’d be fascinated. I’ll even sign a contract if it includes what we’re hiding. How do you like being blackmailed?”

  * * * *

  Copyright © 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.

  KIT REED

  (1932– )

  Kit Reed and I had a difference of opinion about what story to use in this anthology. I love some of her earliest stories, like “The Wait,” and suggested one of them for the book. “Can’t you please,” she asked, “use something from this century?” She won the argument when she sent me the haunting “What Wolves Know.”

  Born Lillian Craig Reed, Kit is mainly thought of as an author of feminist SF or literary fiction, but she’s had success in a number of genres (and a number of names, such as pseudonyms Kit Craig and Shelley Hyde). After graduating from Notre Dame, Kit worked as a reporter in Florida and Connecticut, where she was named New England Newspaperwoman of the Year in both 1958 and 1959. At the same time she began selling fiction (Anthony Boucher bought her first SF story in 1958) and receiving literary recognition from sources that usually ignored SF writers. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964 and was the first American recipient of a five-year international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation the following year. She began teaching and running writing workshops at Wesleyan University in 1974, and is now Resident Writer.

  Although Kit’s work has strong genre overtones (and unlike some writers, she never disavowed her SF roots as a price for literary acceptance) her themes are primarily social and she has helped push the field in some directions others were reluctant to go, such as when she edited Fat (1974) an anthology of stories and essays about food and compulsive eating. Her stories have appeared in a wide range of publications, from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to the Yale Review and Kenyon Review. She served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle for five years in the 1990s, and is a board member of the Author’s League Fund. Probably her best-known book (and my favorite) is the story collection Weird Women, Wired Women (1997), but she continues to write and win awards in a variety of genres. (Her 2004 young adult novel Thinner Than Thou won the Alex Award, for instance.)

  Kit and her husband Joe live in Connecticut with their Scotties, Tig and Bridey (McTeague and MacBride of Frankenstein).

  WHAT WOLVES KNOW, by Kit Reed

  First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2007

  When you have been raised by wolves people expect better of you, but you have no idea what they mean by better.

  Happy comes out of the crate panting and terrified.

  When you have been raised by wolves, you expect better of people.

  Injured in the struggle before the dart bit him and his world went away, Happy blinks into the white glare.

  A dark shape moves into the blinding light. Sound explodes, a not-quite bark. “Welcome home!”

  This is nothing like home. Then why is the smell of this place so familiar? Troubled, Happy backs away, sucking his torn paw.

  He hears a not-quite purr. “Is that him?”

  “Back off Susan, you’re scaring him. Handsome bastard, under all the filth.” The dark shape gets bigger. “Hold still so we can look at you.”

  Happy scrambles backward.

  “Wait, dammit. What’s the matter with your hand?”

  The not-quite bark-er is not quite a wolf. Pink, he is, and naked, except for fur on top, with all his pink parts wrapped like a package in tan cloth. A… Hunter is the first thought that comes. Happy has never been this close to one, not that he chooses to remember. He looks down. His body is choking. There is cloth on Happy too! It won’t come off no matter how hard he shakes. He tears at it with his teeth.

  The not-wolf yaps, “Stop that! We want you looking good for the press conference.”

  Happy does not know what this means. With his back hairs rising, he gives the wolf’s first warning. He grrrs at the man. Man. That’s one of Happy’s words. And the other? Woman. The rest, he will not parse. The man grabs for him even though Happy rolls back his lips to show his fangs. The wolf’s second warning. Now, wolves, wolves know when close is too close, and they keep their distance. With wolves, you always know where you are.

  Wolves don’t stare like that unless they are about to spring and rip your throat out, but unlike the wolf, man has no code. If Happy bolts, will this one bring him down and close those big square teeth in him?

  “Hold still! What happened to your hand?”

  Happy does as taught; he snarls. The wolf’s last warning.

  “Now, stop. I didn’t bring you all this way to hurt you.”

  “Brent, he’s hurt.” The other voice is not at all like barking. “Oh, you poor thing, you’re bleeding.”

  The man growls, “Come here. We can’t let the people see blood.”

  Happy bunches his shoulders and drops to a crouch, but the man keeps on coming. Happy backs and backs. Oh, that thing he does with his face, too many teeth showing. Just stop! The more Happy scrambles away the more the man crowds him. At his back the walls meet like the jaws of a trap. He tips back his and howls. “Ah-whooooooo�
��”

  “Quiet! What will people think?”

  “Ah-whoooooo.” Happy stops breathing. He is listening. Not one wolf responds. There is an unending din in this bright place but there are no wolves anywhere. Even though he was running away when the humans caught him, Happy’s heart shudders. He is separated from his pack.

  “Shut up. Shut up and I’ll get you a present.”

  There are words Happy knows and words he doesn’t know, but he remembers only one of them well enough to speak. “Oh,” he barks bravely, even though he is cornered. “Oh, oh!”

  “That’s better. Now, hold still.” When a human shows its teeth at you it means something completely different from what you are taught to watch out for, but you had better watch out for it.

  The woman purrs, “Brent, you’re scaring him!”

  Woman. Another of Happy’s words. The sound she makes is nothing like a howl, but he thinks they are kindred.

  “Are you going to help me or what?” The man lunges. Should Happy attack? Other words rush in. Clothes. Arms. Clothes cover the man’s stiff arms and he is waving them madly. How can Happy tear out the throat with all that in the way? Can he bring the man down before he pulls out his…

  Another of Happy’s words comes back. Gun. It makes him shudder.

  “Brent, he’s shaking.”

  “I’m only trying to help him!”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” Sweet, that voice. She sounds like his… Another word he used to know. Mother. Parts of Happy change in ways he does not understand. She says, “Look at him Brent, he’s shaking!”

  “Oh,” Happy barks hysterically. “Oh, oh!”

  “Come on, now. Calm down or I’ll give you another shot.”

  The man makes a grab for him. In another minute those hands will close in his fur. Grief touches Happy like a feather, for like the man with his grasping fingers and not-quite barking, Happy is more pink than fur. It is confusing.