“I'll be all right, Charlie,” he chuckled.
But during the next twenty-four hours, the sunlight; the trees outside his window; the color of the flowers a girl had brought him; the hummed song of the nurse who came to attend him, her pretty face, her brown hair; the sound of footsteps in the hall; the settling of night, the distant noises of traffic—all this and much more—seemed to become infinitely precious to him, and to be savored and loved for whatever time he still had left. He could not remember ever having looked upon life as so wonderful a possession, in all the years that he knew.
There was also the beauty of remembered reverie—kid dreams of where he would go, and what he would accomplish. But in that, again, there was the core of bitterness, and of a defiance which struggled with all its fury for a way out. And so, suddenly, out of that will and need and groping, there came a thought of what he might do, even yet! Now, incredibly, it could seem an answer to everything! That night he was glad to sleep, for it helped shorten the hours that must pass before he could discuss what he had in mind with Charlie, who had promised to come at eleven the next morning.
WHEN HIS friend arrived, Jay Guthrie asked his question without preliminaries: “Look, Charlie—there’s nothing more brutal that a guy with a bum ticker could enquire about, I know. But how much chance have I got of surviving the acceleration of a takeoff into space? After I get better, I mean—like you said I would, for a while?”
Guthrie was sure that Doctor Charles Bonner’s cheeks went slightly grey at the query. For a moment the physician’s eyes bored into him. “Are you crazy?” Bonner demanded at last.
Jay Guthrie smiled. “Could be,” he answered. “But I’m dead serious. I guess you can figure out some of my reasons.”
Bonner nodded. “Trying to cram fulfillment of early ambitions of being a bold interplanetary adventurer into four months of time—is that it?” he said. “Also, there might be the common thought that suicide is better than just lying supinely and waiting.”
Guthrie chuckled. “Uh-huh—only there could be more,” he replied. “Look, Charlie—space is the ruggedest thing we know, a killer, a dead, cold vacuum—the opposite and antithesis of life. It is alien and unfriendly. And to us of Earth, the other known planets are little different in aspect from space itself. Though I happen to be one of the people who is fascinated by such things... But you haven’t answered my question, Charlie. Could I endure the several minutes of several gravities of acceleration necessary to achieve escape velocity from the Earth? Would my heart quit for good before that could happen; or would there be, say a fifty-fifty possibility of my still being alive after that was accomplished? Maybe you can see now what I’m driving at, Charlie. There’s a weightlessness out there. So, deadly space could have a gentler side. Remember you said something about less strain on a sick heart, Charlie...”
Again Bonner eyed Guthrie curiously. “Oh—” he said at last. “I think I see what you mean, Jay—though Lord only knows if it’s valid or not. As for your question, I couldn’t honestly promise that the thrust of a rocket, lasting for only about fifteen minutes, would kill you. People—even sick people—are tougher than many would believe. If we waited until you improved to the best condition that you will reach, there might be, as you say, a half-and-half chance of your surviving to see the stars stripped of atmosphere...”
The excitement of the research physician showed in Bonner’s deep-set eyes.
Guthrie’s jaw hardened. “Thanks, Charlie,” he breathed. “That’s all I wanted to know; I’m going to try it.”
“No spaceship line would accept you as a passenger, Jay,” Bonner warned; “there are rigid insurance liabilities.”
“I wasn’t thinking of spaceship lines,” Guthrie answered. “Before he got killed trying to cross the Atlantic floor in that sub-sea tractor of his, Dad made a pile of money with his books and lectures of high adventure. It’s mine, now, and I’ve made some of my own with my patents. If necessary, I’ll blow it all on a small ship of my own.”
Bonner kept studying his friend. “You’re crazy, like I said, Jay,” he commented at last. “As crazy as hell! A man, sick—going out there! At least you’ll have to take somebody along! Or were you thinking differently?”
“Yes, I was, Charlie,” Guthrie informed the young doctor. “I wonder if you know what I mean? At certain times of his life, a man gropes for a certain mood that happens to fit him just then. It’s like an instinct. I was born lonely, Charlie—though I like cities, movement, and people, too. But now I want to face the toughest time of my life, alone, and under completely fresh circumstances. I want to feel self-reliant. Maybe it’s folly, but I don’t want a doctor always to coddle me; that would be defeat of a sort. Of course I’m sure I could get a doctor to go along with me. But this is a toss, winner take all— I wouldn’t care for it any other way. Of course, Charlie, you’re more than welcome—if you want to join the party—for the sake of your own interests, and not to look after me. So make your choice.”
Bonner nodded. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “But you know me. I still have both of my parents, a wife, and a daughter three years old. And the region off the Earth never set me afire. So there, I guess, is your answer, pal...”
2
JAY GUTHRIE completed his plans and gave his orders from a hospital bed and then a wheel-chair. The small ship was delivered to the New York spaceport. Doctor Bonner saw to the installation of much special equipment; provisions were stowed aboard.
One autumn afternoon—his last on Earth—Jay Guthrie, on his feet again, but unsteady, stood at the spaceport with his friend. The ship was a trim, ugly needle before them. Guthrie didn’t know whether it was the instrument of his execution, or something much better.
Guthrie and Bonner had dinner at the port. They watched other craft take off, most of them bound for the rich mining regions of the Asteroids, and for Venus, twin of Earth, which one day might become, by the works of science, not the hot, carbon-dioxide smothered planet it still was, but a second home to man.
Guthrie’s goal, tentative at best, considering the life-or-death prospect he faced, was not even visible in the night sky in its present orbital position. But it was outward from the sun; it was ancient and romantic. Its name had been a byword for many years, before the recent reality of interplanetary flight. But now it was of little value, economically.
Before midnight, Guthrie strapped himself to the special couch in the craft’s cabin. His friend attached an armlet-like device above his left elbow. The firing-timers of the ship’s rockets already whirred. Ten minutes to go.
“Thanks for everything, Charlie,” Guthrie said, shaking the physician’s hand. “You’ll know what happens. Good luck. Now get out of here fast...”
Charlie Bonner’s grin was gone, as the door clicked shut. Outer sounds were cut off, like the movement of a world already left behind. Time rushed on—a current that never stopped. Fuel pumps slobbered into action; the roar and thrust began. In a squeezing tumult of sound, and faltering heartbeats, and pressure where there was no breath left, Jay Guthrie’s sense of being vanished.
Perhaps the needle, jabbing inward from the metal ring above his elbow, injected stimulant into a dead arm; perhaps the automatically oxygen-enriched air of the cabin gave no help to moveless lungs. But it was not quite so...
At scattered moments Guthrie was aware, again. His chest seemed full of whirling knives; each breath was another battle; he seemed to fall forever. The silence around him magnified his own ragged breath and the uneven thump of the pulses in his head. Frightening strangeness enveloped him. Yet he was triumphant; he put a capsule in his mouth, sucked water from a flexible plastic bottle, and swallowed.
Into a phone he wheezed harshly: “When I moved, an automatic signal was radioed out, Charlie. So you must know... I’m alive! Now I’m conscious. I’m following your instructions. Maybe I was right, Charlie. We’ll see...”
After that, his consciousness was intermittent and vague for
the equivalent of many days. When he could, he swallowed medicines and liquid nourishment; pain grew less. He relaxed, slept often—for a long time it seemed that he was never quite awake. The high oxygen-content of the cabin’s air made breathing effortless. But the best therapy was another thing, impossible on Earth. Space was airless, soundless, lifeless, except within the bubble of a ship. Cold, symbolized in Guthrie’s childhood by singing telephone wires and numbing cheeks, was of a far deeper order, here. Yet, when the hard ultra-violet rays of the sun were unfiltered by heavy glass, they could kill, too. There was nothing here, as you coursed along, outward, at a velocity that was hard to realize. There was not even gravity. And that was the point!
The harsh void was gentle to a damaged heart. There was no lifting of the blood against the massive and unscreenable pull of the Earth! Yes—it was true! He, Jay Guthrie, could feel the sense of ease coming into his rib-cage. And the therapy could go on for months—his course to his distant goal was the long one, the slow, outward spiral, which some called the Classic Route. Two hundred and twenty-six days, considering the present orbital positions of Earth and his destination. Time healed everything, didn’t it? An old saying. The weightlessness might upset a stomach, until it acclimated itself, but to a heart it was kind. To sleep long hours was a thing of triumph and satisfaction, here.
So, for Guthrie, the shock of strangeness and solitude was cushioned by the thrill of success. He lazed around, dreaming, feeling proud of himself, and pleasantly lonely. Beyond the ports were the stars, the cold blackness—imaginings of his romantic boyhood. He was following other friends beyond the Earth after all!
Even so, he looked back at the Earth, shrunk to a tiny, murky disc in the rear-view periscope, with mixed feelings. It was greenish. Green was the color of life, yet you could also think of it as the color of poison. He could laugh at Earth, now, as if it was a monster that he had eluded. Yet, beyond his joy, could he already feel the icy fingers of an exile, for which, perhaps, there would be no end?
This thought was remote and easy to forget, for all of his eagerness, now, lay round him and ahead. Years of frustration would be answered. There would be no death, now, unless he were unlucky. He grinned, hummed songs, looked at the grim lines of his instruments and mechanisms as at things of love. He read books about his dimly-imaginable destination. He cooked himself satisfying meals, and learned to eat with clamps and tongs as the space-men did. Life was a languid relish, a treasure refound. And so he coursed onward. Astrogation he had learned as it had developed, as a person of his interests naturally would—step by step. But now that he was on his way, he did not need it. Mostly a spacecraft was aimed, not steered.
WHEN, AT last, Guthrie neared Mars, with its odd, swirled markings over rust red, he felt prepared and eager—like one who has had a long rest on a remote beach. The escape-velocity of Mars was less than half of Earth’s; and since he approached his goal at only that rate, the strain of checking speed would be similarly less than that of his takeoff. Besides, he was in far better shape. Yet, of course, there was a chance...
The piloting-mechanism brought the ship in: the rockets thundered at precisely the necessary instant. True, his chest began to hurt; breathing grew difficult. Some of the time he must have blacked out, for the next he knew, he was flying south, as in a plane, on the ship’s airfoils. Streamers of dust, blown by the thin, cold wind, marked the desert below. Guthrie hoped that the sickness in him wouldn’t last... He took over the controls, manually. Yes—he knew where he was going—where he almost had to go. Part of his mind hoped that the gravity of Mars, slightly more than one-third of the terrestrial, would be enough to exercise strengthened though uncertain cardiac muscles—enough, and still not too much...
Within an hour he grounded the ship on its belly-skids. Dust flew in every direction. There was a jolting stop, then stillness pregnant with enigma. He was far from being the first man to reach Mars; yet, those who had come had left most of its lonely expanse untouched. Suppressing his eagerness, as well as his fear that the alien solitude would be far too rich for his nerves, Guthrie lay for a full hour on his swivelled couch to rest, and to get the faintness out of him.
Then, in plastic helmet and heavy garments, he was outside, beyond the airlock, his every sense drinking the strangeness in. For then, at least, intense interest was a protecting shield against the nostalgia that could madden a man in places like this. Relieved and happy at this discovery about himself, Guthrie looked around him.
It was early summer, here near the south pole. The small, white sun, which would not set for five Earth-months, hung eternally low over flatness that gleamed wetly in spots, off to the near horizon. The ground was spongy under Guthrie’s boots—fallen vegetation, centuries old. Something like a leaf quivered. The ground was blackened by the wetness, seeping from the white line of frost and snow off to the south—the polar cap. There, low, snow-whitened mountains loomed, rock sticking blackly through the thin veneer that was melting away, or sublimating. Water could stay liquid only briefly in this tenuous, moisture-greedy air.
Yet at the hub of what looked like a giant bevelled gear—of stone, not metal—lying flat and embedded in the soggy soil, there was a puddle a yard across. Why was he surprised that the ripples on its surface looked just as wind-ripples should? The wonder of his borrowed life was even stronger, here.
NOW HE put a fragment of dry vegetable substance in the water, and watched the bit of flossy stuff at its top act as a sail. “A boat on dry old Mars,” he said aloud. Guthrie chuckled, remembering times when he was about ten; when the snow was melting at home, he’d imagined himself at the fringe of a Martian polar-cap—before anyone had yet left the Earth.
His own shadow spoiled the puddle; it cut off the sun’s warming rays. He saw fronds of frostwork fairly dart from the pool’s edge toward its center, swiftly congealing. Yes, shadows were cold, here, and the sky looked cold—almost violet. Thin, yellowish-white lines streaked it, like cirrus clouds at home—not vapor, but finely-divided ice crystals, tainted with ochre dust. Let them cover the sun for a moment, and there would be freezing everywhere...
Yet he saw the green, too—hardy little buds, just now showing through the fibrous matting of fallen growths. And there was something like a flower, low-growing, three-petalled, dark red. He touched it; half-animated, as if it borrowed characteristics from the animals, the flower-thing closed on his gloved finger, and tried feebly to maintain its prickly clutch. “Tough, huh?” he chuckled. “Why not pick on somebody your size? Or do you just want to be friendly?”
He turned his attention back to the puddle, liquid again, but drying fast. He wet a finger, and thrust it under his helmet for an instant; while air puffed suddenly from his lungs, as it would have done at a high altitude on Earth, he tasted the moisture. Though his ears and head buzzed, it was not a very dangerous procedure. And now he knew the flavor of the water of Mars—flat as if boiled—deficient in dissolved oxygen, that is, and faintly salty, in memory of seas that had dried up ages ago, leaving their minerals behind.
Guthrie readjusted his helmet, sat down on that great circular stone, and sought to analyze his complex joy at being here. There was awareness, reverie. In another scene of rusty reds, soft browns and faint greens, he was like the hard-looking, grey-eyed kid with a .22 rifle, roaming the woods, exploring this and that passionately as he had been. In a way, it was the reliving of a lost time, as well as something utterly new. It was a deep, and seemingly endless excitement, a balm for the mind, cupped in quiet and lonesomeness and change—hectic New York seemed as remote as if it would not come into being for a million years. There was the thought: So this is what Mars looks like when you’re really on it; it’s telescopic distance impossibly shrunken to feet and inches!... This is the paradise of Mars, the poplar regions in summer. There’s water here, not red desert. The sun never sets; the temperature rarely falls much below freezing. Tough plants can grow, defying the aging of a world...
Guthrie knew t
hat it was good to think and feel as he did now, for the future was surely a murk, here, a dark question, a wondering of what would happen, and what he would do, in the end. There was even the eerie notion that he was gone so far from the Earth, that his new life was something beyond death. Guthrie suppressed the idea, and went on studying his happy mood.
Of course it had many more angles. This planet was not just what he saw, here and now. It was unthinkable eons of history, too, extending back to a separate beginning of life, doubtless in a warm sea, as on Earth. Though Mars, being smaller, cooled sooner, became ready to harbor living things, sooner. There must have been jungles, evolution, beasts of murky shape battling to survive. Out of the process emerged a dominant form that was not human, but that had dreamed and built wonderfully, and even—it was known—had leapt across space, before it won its final battle, and perished.
To be aware of all this, was more wild, inner beauty. Some of it had already been learned and written about by others. The rest was scattered far and wide, and buried deep, in relics and monuments. Guthrie’s brain was full of shifting pictures, dimly-seen—monsters, sea-wash, blue sky, warm wind, cities rising, machines being built. Air growing thinner, colder... The reverie of it all, and the solitude, were rich living, now and yet. How few of Mars’ thousands of square miles had yet been touched by human boots? Were there spots that even Martian vision organs, now gone forever, had never seen? Even at home, not far from great cities, weren’t there woodland nooks that people had never looked upon?
3
JAY GUTHRIE felt a cold, pleasant thrill. For half an hour he sat there on that stone thing, touching all of his surroundings, with an intellectual caress.
Then his interim existence—between now and some revealing moment of the future, when how his patched-up heart had finally fared on Mars became plain, allowing him freedom, or forcing him into narrow limits—began. His lonesome, studious side had no present wish for human companionship. Perhaps the nearest settlement was two hundred miles away, along the fringe of the south polar-cap. But let that thought also belong to the future, when the mood of now—for whose shelter from potentially-harsh strangeness he was so grateful—wore itself out, as inevitably must happen. He dreaded the uncertainties of that future, as perhaps he half-dreaded the people in it. So, for the present, let it be laid aside...
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