The Past Through Tomorrow Part 43

He said goodnight to Mrs. Tully and thanked her for a wonderful dinner, then followed Tully into the guest room. 'Only way to get rid of that family curse we're saddled with, Bill,' he apologized. 'Stay up as long as you like.' Tully stepped to the window and opened it. 'You'll sleep well here. We're up high enough to get honest-to-goodness fresh air.' He stuck his head out and took a couple of big breaths. 'Nothing like the real article,' he continued as he withdrew from the window. 'I'm a country boy at heart. What's the matter, Bill?'

'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

'I thought you looked a little pale. Well, sleep tight. I've already set your bed for seven; that'll give us plenty of time.'

'Thanks, Joe. Goodnight.' As soon as Tully was out of the room he braced himself, then went over and closed the window. Sweating, he turned away and switched the ventilation back on. That done, he sank down on the edge of the bed.

He sat there for a long time, striking one cigarette after another. He knew too well that the peace of mind he thought he had regained was unreal. There was nothing left to him but shame and a long, long hurt. To have reached the point where he had to knuckle under to a tenth-rate knothead like Ed Schultz - it would have been better if he had never come out of the Valkyrie business.

Presently he took five grains of 'Fly-Rite' from his pouch, swallowed it, and went to bed. He got up almost at once, forced himself to open the window a trifle, then compromised by changing the setting of the bed so that it would not turn out the lights after he got to sleep.

He had been asleep and dreaming for an indefinitely long time. He was back in s.p.a.ce again - indeed, he had never been away from it. He was happy, with the full happiness of a man who has awakened to find it was only a bad dream.

The crying disturbed his serenity. At first it made him only vaguely uneasy, then he began to feel in some way responsible - he must do something about it. The transition to falling had only dream logic behind it, but it was real to him. He was grasping, his hands were slipping, had slipped - and there was nothing under him but the black emptiness of s.p.a.ce - He was awake and gasping, on Joe Tully's guest-room bed; the lights burned bright around him.

But the crying persisted.

He shook his head, then listened. It was real all right. Now he had it identified - a cat, a kitten by the sound of it.

He sat up. Even if he had not had the s.p.a.ceman's traditional fondness for cats, he would have investigated. However, he liked cats for themselves, quite aside from their neat s.h.i.+pboard habits, their ready adaptability to changing accelerations, and their usefulness in keeping the s.h.i.+p free of those other creatures that go wherever man goes. So he got up at once and looked for this one.

A quick look around showed him that the kitten was not in the room, and his ear led him to the correct spot; the sound came in through the slightly opened window. He s.h.i.+ed off, stopped, and tried to collect his thoughts.

He told himself that it was unnecessary to do anything more; if the sound came in through the window, then it must be because it came out of some nearby window. But he knew that he was lying to himself; the sound was close by. In some impossible way the cat was just outside his window, thirty-five stories above the street.

He sat down and tried to strike a cigarette, but the tube broke in his fingers. He let the fragments fall to the floor, got up and took six nervous steps toward the window, as if he were being jerked along. He sank down to his knees, grasped the window and threw it wide open, then clung to the windowsill, his eyes tight shut.

After a time the sill seemed to steady a bit. He opened his eyes, gasped, and shut them again. Finally he opened them again, being very careful not to look out at the stars, not to look down at the street. He had half expected to find the cat on a balcony outside his room - it seemed the only reasonable explanation. But there was no balcony, no place at all where a cat could reasonably be.

However, the mewing was louder than ever. It seemed to come from directly under him. Slowly he forced his head out, still clinging to the sill, and made himself look down. Under him, about four feet lower than the edge of the window, a narrow ledge ran around the side of the building. Seated on it was a woe-begone ratty-looking kitten. It stared up at him and meowed again.

It was barely possible that, by clinging to the sill with one hand and making a long arm with the other, he could reach it without actually going out the window, he thought - if he could bring himself to do it. He considered calling Tully, then thought better of it. Tully was shorter than he was, had less reach. And the kitten had to be rescued now, before the fluff-brained idiot jumped or fell.

He tried for it. He shoved his shoulders out, clung with his left arm and reached down with his right. Then he opened his eyes and saw that he was a foot or ten inches away from the kitten still. It sniffed curiously in the direction of his hand.

He stretched till his bones cracked. The kitten promptly skittered away from his clutching fingers, stopping a good six feet down the ledge. There it settled down and commenced was.h.i.+ng its face.

He inched back inside and collapsed, sobbing, on the floor underneath the window. 'I can't do it,' he whispered. 'I can't do it. Not again -'

The Rocket s.h.i.+p Valkyrie was two hundred and forty-nine days out from Earth-Luna s.p.a.ce Terminal and approaching Mars Terminal on Deimos, outer Martian satellite. William Cole, Chief Communications Officer and relief pilot, was sleeping sweetly when his a.s.sistant shook him. 'Hey! Bill! Wake up - we're in a jam.'

'Huh? Wazzat?' But he was already reaching for his socks. 'What's the trouble, Tom?'

Fifteen minutes later he knew that his junior officer had not exaggerated; he was reporting the facts to the Old Man - the primary piloting radar was out of whack. Tom Sandburg had discovered it during a routine check, made as soon as Mars was inside the maximum range of the radar pilot. The captain had shrugged. 'Fix it, Mister - and be quick about it. We need it.'

Bill Cole shook his head. 'There's nothing wrong with it, Captain - inside. She acts as if the antenna were gone completely.'

'That's impossible. We haven't even had a meteor alarm.'

'Might be anything, Captain. Might be metal fatigue and it just fell off. But we've got to replace that antenna. Stop the spin on the s.h.i.+p and I'll go out and fix it. I can jury-rig a replacement while she loses her spin.'

The Valkyrie was a luxury s.h.i.+p, of her day. She was a.s.sembled long before anyone had any idea of how to produce an artificial gravity field. Nevertheless she had pseudogravity for the comfort of her pa.s.sengers. She spun endlessly around her main axis, like a sh.e.l.l from a rifled gun; the resulting angular acceleration - miscalled 'centrifugal force' - kept her pa.s.sengers firm in their beds, or steady on their feet. The spin was started as soon as her rockets stopped blasting at the beginning of a trip and was stopped only when it was necessary to maneuver into a landing. It was accomplished, not by magic, but by reaction against the contrary spin of a flywheel located on her centerline.

The captain looked annoyed. 'I've started to take the spin off, but I can't wait that long. Jury-rig the astrogational radar for piloting.'

Cole started to explain why the astrogational radar could not be adapted to short-range work, then decided not to try. 'It can't be done, sir. It's a technical impossibility.'

'When I was your age I could jury-rig anything! Well, find me an answer, Mister. I can't take this s.h.i.+p down blind. Not even for the Harriman Medal.'

Bill Cole hesitated for a moment before replying. 'I'll have to go out while she's still got spin on her, Captain, and make the replacement. There isn't any other way to do it.'

The captain looked away from him, his jaw muscles flexed. 'Get the replacement ready. Hurry up about it.'

Cole found the captain already at the airlock when he arrived with the gear he needed for the repair. To his surprise the Old Man was suited up. 'Explain to me what I'm to do,' he ordered Bill.

'You're not going out, sir?' The captain simply nodded.

Bill took a look at his captain's waist line, or where his waist line used to be. Why, the Old Man must be thirty-five if he was a day! 'I'm afraid I can't explain too clearly. I had expected to make the repair myself.'

'I've never asked a man to do a job I wouldn't do myself. Explain it to me.'

'Excuse me, sir - but can you chin yourself with one hand?'

'What's that got to do with it?'

'Well, we've got forty-eight pa.s.sengers, sir, and -' 'Shut up!'

Sandburg and he, both in s.p.a.ce suits, helped the Old Man down the hole after the inner door of the lock was closed and the air exhausted. The s.p.a.ce beyond the lock was a vast, starflecked emptiness. With spin still on the s.h.i.+p, every direction outward was 'down', down for millions of uncounted miles. They put a safety line on him, of course - nevertheless it gave him a sinking feeling to see the captain's head disappear in the bottomless, black hole.

The line paid out steadily for several feet, then stopped. When it had been stopped for several minutes, Bill leaned over and touched his helmet against Sandburg's. 'Hang on to my feet. I'm going to take a look.'

He hung head down out the lock and looked around. The captain was stopped, hanging by both hands, nowhere near the antenna fixture. He scrambled back up and reversed himself. 'I'm going out.'

It was no great trick, he found, to hang by his hands and swing himself along to where the captain was stalled. The Valkyrie was a s.p.a.ce-to-s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p, not like the sleek-sided jobs we see around earthports; she was covered with handholds for the convenience of repairmen at the terminals. Once he reached him, it was possible, by grasping the safe steel rung that the captain clung to, to aid him in swinging back to the last one he had quitted. Five minutes later Sandburg was pulling the Old Man up through the hole and Bill was scrambling after him.

He began at once to unbuckle the repair gear from the captain's suit and transfer it to his own. He lowered himself back down the hole and was on his way before the older man had recovered enough to object, if he still intended to.

Swinging out to where the antenna must be replaced was not too hard, though he had all eternity under his toes. The suit impeded him a little - the gloves were clumsy - but he was used to s.p.a.cesuits. He was a little winded from helping the captain, but he could not stop to think about that. The increased spin bothered him somewhat; the airlock was nearer the axis of spin than was the antenna - he felt heavier as he moved out.

Getting the replacement antenna s.h.i.+pped was another matter. It was neither large nor heavy, but he found it impossible to fasten it into place. He needed one hand to cling by, one to hold the antenna, and one to handle the wrench. That left him shy one hand, no matter how he tried it.

Finally he jerked his safety line to signal Sandburg for more slack. Then he unshackled it from his waist, working with one hand, pa.s.sed the end twice through a handhold and knotted it; he left about six feet of it hanging free. The shackle on the free end he fastened to another handhold. The result was a loop, a bight, an improvised bosun's chair, which would support his weight while he man-handled the antenna into place. The job went fairly quickly then.

He was almost through. There remained one bolt to fasten on the far side, away from where he swung. The antenna was already secured at two points and its circuit connection made. He decided he could manage it with one hand. He left his perch and swung over, monkey fas.h.i.+on.

The wrench slipped as he finished tightening the bolt; it slipped from his grasp, fell free. He watched it go, out and out and out, down and down and down, until it was so small he could no longer see it. It made him dizzy to watch it, bright in the sunlight against the deep black of s.p.a.ce. He had been too busy to look down, up to now.

He s.h.i.+vered. 'Good thing I was through with it,' he said. 'It would be a long walk to fetch it.' He started to make his way back.

He found that he could not.

He had swung past the antenna to reach his present position, using a grip on his safety-line swing to give him a few inches more reach. Now the loop of line hung quietly, just out of reach. There was no way to reverse the process.

He hung by both hands and told himself not to get panicky - he must think his way out. Around the other side? No, the steel skin of the Valkyrie was smooth there - no handhold for more than six feet. Even if he were not tired - and he had to admit that he was, tired and getting a little cold - even if he were fresh, it was an impossible swing for anyone not a chimpanzee.

He looked down - and regretted it.

There was nothing below him but stars, down and down, endlessly. Stars, swinging past as the s.h.i.+p spun with him, emptiness of all time and blackness and cold.

He found himself trying to hoist himself bodily onto the single narrow rung he clung to, trying to reach it with his toes. It was a futile, strength-wasting excess. He quieted his panic sufficiently to stop it, then hung limp.

It was easier if he kept his eyes closed. But after a while he always had to open them and look. The Big Dipper would swing past and then, presently, Orion. He tried to compute the pa.s.sing minutes in terms of the number of rotations the s.h.i.+p made, but his mind would not work clearly, and, after a while, he would have to shut his eyes.

His hands were becoming stiff - and cold. He tried to rest them by hanging by one hand at a time. He let go with his left hand, felt pins-and-needles course through it, and beat it against his side. Presently it seemed time to spell his right hand.

He could no longer reach up to the rung with his left hand. He did not have the power left in him to make the extra pull; he was fully extended and could not shorten himself enough to get his left hand up.

He could no longer feel his right hand at all.

He could see it slip. It was slipping - The sudden release in tension let him know that he was falling falling. The s.h.i.+p dropped away from him.

He came to with the captain bending over him. 'Just keep quiet, Bill.'

'Where -, 'Take it easy. The patrol from Deimos was already close by when you let go. They tracked you on the 'scope, matched orbits with you, and picked you up. First time in history, I guess. Now keep quiet. You're a sick man - you hung there more than two hours, Bill.'

The meowing started up again, louder than ever. He got up on his knees and looked out over the windowsill. The kitten was still away to the left on the ledge. He thrust his head cautiously out a little further, remembering not to look at anything but the kitten and the ledge. 'Here, kitty!' he called. 'Here, kit-kit-kitty! Here, kitty, come kitty!'

The kitten stopped was.h.i.+ng and managed to look puzzled.

'Come, kitty,' he repeated softly. He let go the windowsill with his right hand and gestured toward it invitingly. The kitten approached about three inches, then sat down. 'Here, kitty,' he pleaded and stretched his arm as far as possible.

The fluff ball promptly backed away again.

He withdrew his arm and thought about it. This was getting nowhere, he decided. If he were to slide over the edge and stand on the ledge, he could hang on with one arm and be perfectly safe. He knew that, he knew it would be safe - he needn't look down!

He drew himself back inside, reversed himself, and, with great caution, gripping the sill with both arms, let his legs slide down the face of the building. He focused his eyes carefully on the corner of the bed.

The ledge seemed to have been moved. He could not find it, and was beginning to be sure that he had reached past it, when he touched it with one toe - then he had both feet firmly planted on it. It seemed about six inches wide. He took a deep breath.

Letting go with his right arm, he turned and faced the kitten. It seemed interested in the procedure but not disposed to investigate more closely. If he were to creep along the ledge, holding on with his left hand, he could just about reach it from the corner of the window - He moved his feet one at a time, baby fas.h.i.+on, rather than pa.s.s one past the other. By bending his knees a trifle, and leaning, he could just manage to reach it. The kitten sniffed his groping fingers, then leaped backward. One tiny paw missed the edge; it scrambled and regained its footing. 'You little idiot!' he said indignantly, 'do you want to bash your brains out?'

'If any,' he added. The situation looked hopeless now; the baby cat was too far away to be reached from his anchorage at the window, no matter how he stretched. He called 'Kitty, kitty' rather hopelessly, then stopped to consider the matter.

He could give it up.

He could prepare himself to wait all night in the hope that the kitten would decide to come closer. Or he could go get it.

The ledge was wide enough to take his weight. If he made himself small, flat to the wall, no weight rested on his left arm. He moved slowly forward, retaining the grip on the window as long as possible, inching so gradually that he hardly seemed to move. When the window frame was finally out of reach, when his left hand was flat to smooth wall, he made the mistake of looking down, down, past the sheer wall at the glowing pavement far below.

He pulled his eyes back and fastened them on a spot on the wall, level with his eyes and only a few feet away. He was still there!

And so was the kitten. Slowly he separated his feet, moving his right foot forward, and bent his knees. He stretched his right hand along the wall, until he was over and a little beyond the kitten.

He brought it down in a sudden swipe, as if to swat a fly. He found himself with a handful of scratching, biting fur.

He held perfectly still then, and made no attempt to check the minor outrages the kitten was giving him. Arms still outstretched, body flat to the wall, he started his return. He could not see where he was going and could not turn his head without losing some little of his margin of balance. It seemed a long way back, longer than he had come, when at last the fingertips of his left hand slipped into the window opening.

He backed up the rest of the way in a matter of seconds, slid both arms over the sill, then got his right knee over. He rested himself on the sill and took a deep breath. 'Man!' he said aloud. 'That was a tight squeeze. You're a menace to traffic, little cat.'

He glanced down at the pavement. It was certainly a long way down - looked hard, too.

He looked up at the stars. Mighty nice they looked and mighty bright. He braced himself in the window frame, back against one side, foot pushed against the other, and looked at them. The kitten settled down in the cradle of his stomach and began to buzz. He stroked it absent-mindedly and reached for a cigarette. He would go out to the port and take his physical and his psycho tomorrow, he decided. He scratched the kitten's ears. 'Little fluff head,' he said, 'how would you like to take a long, long ride with me?'

The Green Hills of Earth

This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the s.p.a.ceways -- but not the official version. You sang his words in school: "I pray for one last landing On the globe that gave me birth; Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth."

Or perhaps you sang in French, or German. Or it might have been Esperanto, while Terra's rainbow banner rippled over your head.

The language does not matter -- it was certainly an Earth tongue. No one has ever translated "Green Hills" into the lisping Venerian speech; no Martian ever croaked and whispered it in the dry corridors. This is ours. We of Earth have exported everything from Hollywood crawlies to synthetic radioactives, but this belongs solely to Terra, and to her sons and daughters wherever they may be.

We have all heard many stories of Rhysling. You may even be one of the many who have sought degrees, or acclaim, by scholarly evaluations of his published works - _Songs of the s.p.a.ceways_, _The Grand Ca.n.a.l and other Poems_, _High and Far_, and _"UP s.h.i.+P!"_ Nevertheless, although you have sung his songs and read his verses, in school and out your whole life, it is at least an even money bet -- unless you are a s.p.a.ceman yourself -- that you have never even heard of most of Rhysling's unpublished songs, such items as _Since the Pusher Met My Cousin_, _That Red-Headed Venusburg Gal_, _Keep Your Pants On, Skipper_, or _A s.p.a.ce Suit Built for Two_.

Nor can we quote them in a family magazine.

Rhysling's reputation was protected by a careful literary executor and by the happy chance that he was never interviewed. _Songs of the s.p.a.ceways_ appeared the week he died; when it became a best seller, the publicity stories about him were pieced together from what people remembered about him plus the highly colored handouts from his publishers.

The resulting traditional picture of Rhysling is about as authentic as George Was.h.i.+ngton's hatchet or King Alfred's cakes.

In truth you would not have wanted him in your parlor; he was not socially acceptable. He had a permanent case of sun itch, which he scratched continually, adding nothing to his negligible beauty.

Van der Voort's portrait of him for the Harriman Centennial edition of his works shows a figure of high tragedy, a solemn mouth, sightless eyes concealed by black silk bandage. He was never solemn! His mouth was always open, singing, grinning, drinking, or eating. The bandage was any rag, usually dirty. After he lost his sight he became less and less neat about his person.

"Noisy" Rhysling was a jetman, second cla.s.s, with eyes as good as yours, when he signed on for a ioop trip to the Jovian asteroids in the RS _Goshawk_. The crew signed releases for everything in those days; a Lloyd's a.s.sociate would have laughed in your face at the notion of insuring a s.p.a.ceman. The s.p.a.ce Precautionary Act had never been heard of, and the Company was responsible only for wages, if and when. Half the s.h.i.+ps that went further than Luna City never came back. s.p.a.cemen did not care; by preference they signed for shares, and any one of them would have bet you that he could jump from the 200th floor of Harriman Tower and ground safely, if you offered him three to two and allowed him rubber heels for the landing.

Jetmen were the most carefree of the lot, and the meanest. Compared with them the masters, the radarmen, and the astrogators (there were no supers nor stewards in those days) were gentle vegetarians. Jetmen knew too much. The others trusted the skill of the captain to get them down safely; jetmen knew that skill was useless against the blind and fitful devils chained inside their rocket motors.

The _Goshawk_ was the first of Harriman's s.h.i.+ps to be converted from chemical fuel to atomic power-piles -- or rather the first that did not blow up. Rhysling knew her well; she was an old tub that had plied the Luna City run, Supra-New York s.p.a.ce station to Leyport and back, before she was converted for deep s.p.a.ce. He had worked the Luna run in her and had been along on the first deep s.p.a.ce trip, Drywater on Mars -- and back, to everyone's surprise.

He should have made chief engineer by the time he signed for the Jovian loop trip, but, after the Drywater pioneer trip, he had been fired, blacklisted, and grounded at Luna City for having spent his time writing a chorus and several verses at a time when he should have been watching his gauges. The song was the infamous _The Skipper is a Father to his Crew_, with the uproariously unprintable final couplet.

The blacklist did not bother him. He won an accordion from a Chinese barkeep in Luna City by cheating at onethumb and thereafter kept going by singing to the miners for drinks and tips until the rapid attrition in s.p.a.cemen caused the Company agent there to give him another chance. He kept his nose clean on the Luna run for a year or two, got back into deep s.p.a.ce, helped give Venusburg its original ripe reputation, strolled the banks of the Grand Ca.n.a.l when a second colony was established at the ancient Martian capital, and froze his toes and ears on the second trip to t.i.tan.