From the Ocean from teh Stars (39 page)

acter assassination went on behind the scenes. All we knew was that a week before the great day, a nonscheduled rocket came up to orbit
with Gregory Wendell aboard. This was quite a surprise, since Gregory
wasn't as big a TV personality as, say, Jeffers Jackson in the U.S. or
Vince Clifford in Britain. However, it seemed that the big boys had can
celed each other out, and Gregg had got the coveted job through one of
those compromises so well known to politicians.

Gregg had started his career as a disc jockey on a university radio
station in the American Midwest, and had worked his way up through
the Hollywood and Manhattan night-club circuits until he had a daily,
nation-wide program of his own. Apart from his cynical yet relaxed personality, his biggest asset was his deep velvet voice, for which he could
probably thank his Negro blood. Even when you flatly disagreed with
what he was saying—even, indeed, when he was tearing you to pieces
in an interview—it was still a pleasure to listen to him.

We gave him the grand tour of the space station, and even (strictly
against regulations) took him out through the air lock in a space suit. He loved it all, but there were two things he liked in particular. "This air you
make," he said, "it beats the stuff we have to breathe down in New York.
This is the first time my sinus trouble has gone since I went into TV." He
also relished the low gravity; at the station's rim, a man had half his
normal, Earth weight—and at the axis he had no weight at all.

However, the novelty of his surroundings didn't distract Gregg from his job. He spent hours at Communications Central, polishing his script
and getting his cues right, and studying the dozens of monitor screens
that would be his windows on the world. I came across him once while
he was running through his introduction of Queen Elizabeth, who would
be speaking from Buckingham Palace at the very end of the program.
He was so intent on his rehearsal that he never even noticed I was stand
ing beside him.

Well, that telecast is now part of history. For the first time a billion
human beings watched a single program that came "live" from every
corner of the Earth, and was a roll call of the world's greatest citizens. Hundreds of cameras on land and sea and air looked inquiringly at the turning globe; and at the end there was that wonderful shot of the Earth
through a zoom lens on the space station, making the whole planet re
cede until it was lost among the stars. . . .

There were a few hitches, of course. One camera on the bed of the
Atlantic wasn't ready on cue, and we had to spend some extra time, look
ing at the Taj Mahal. And owing to a switching error Russian subtitles were superimposed on the South American transmission, while half the

U.S.S.R. found itself trying to read Spanish. But this was nothing to what
might
have happened.

Through the entire three hours, introducing the famous and the un
known with equal ease, came the mellow yet never orotund flow of
Gregg's voice. He did a magnificent job; the congratulations came pour
ing up the beam the moment the broadcast finished. But he didn't hear them; he made one short, private call to his agent, and then went to bed.

Next morning, the Earth-bound ferry was waiting to take him back
to any job he cared to accept. But it left without Gregg Wendell, now
junior station announcer of Relay Two.

"They'll think I'm crazy," he said, beaming happily, "but why should
I go back to that rat race down there? I've all the universe to look at, I
can breathe smog-free air, the low gravity makes me feel a Hercules, and
my three darling ex-wives can't get at me." He kissed his hand to the
departing rocket. "So long, Earth," he called. "I'll be back when I start
pining for Broadway traffic jams and bleary penthouse dawns. And if I get
homesick, I can look at anywhere on the planet just by turning a switch.
Why, I'm more in the middle of things here than I could ever be on
Earth, yet I can cut myself off from the human race whenever I want
to."

He was still smiling as he watched the ferry begin the long fall back
to Earth, toward the fame and fortune that could have been his. And
then, whistling cheerfully, he left the observation lounge in eight-foot
strides to read the weather forecast for Lower Patagonia.

PASSER-BY

It's only fair to warn you, right at the start, that this
is a story with no ending. But it has a definite beginning, for it was while
we were both students at Astrotech that I met Julie. She was in her final
year of solar physics when I was graduating, and during our last year at college we saw a good deal of each other. I've still got the woolen tam-
o'shanter she knitted so that I wouldn't bump my head against my space
helmet. (No, I never had the nerve to wear it.)

Unfortunately, when I was assigned to Satellite Two, Julie went to
the Solar Observatory—at the same distance from Earth, but a couple of degrees eastward along the orbit. So there we were, sitting twenty-two
thousand miles above the middle of Africa—but with nine hundred miles
of empty, hostile space between us.

At first we were both so busy that the pang of separation was somewhat lessened. But when the novelty of life in space had worn off, our
thoughts began to bridge the gulf that divided us. And not only our
thoughts, for I'd made friends with the communications people, and we used to have little chats over the interstation TV circuit. In some ways it
made matters worse seeing each other face to face and never knowing just
how many other people were looking in at the same time. There's not
much privacy in a space station. . . .

Sometimes I'd focus one of our telescopes onto the distant, brilliant
star of the observatory. In the crystal clarity of space, I could use enor
mous magnifications, and could see every detail of our neighbors' equipment—the solar telescopes, the pressurized spheres of the living quarters
that housed the staff, the slim pencils of visiting ferry rockets that had climbed up from Earth. Very often there would be space-suited figures moving among the maze of apparatus, and I would strain my eyes in a
hopeless attempt at identification. It's hard enough to recognize anyone
in a space suit when you're only a few feet apart—but that didn't stop
me from trying.

We'd resigned ourselves to waiting, with what patience we could
muster, until our Earth leave was due in six months' time, when we had
an unexpected stroke of luck. Less than half our tour of duty had passed
when the head of the transport section suddenly announced that he was
going outside with a butterfly net to catch meteors. He didn't become vio
lent, but had to be shipped hastily back to Earth. I took over his job on
a temporary basis and now had—in theory at least—the freedom of space.

There were ten of the little low-powered rocket scooters under my
proud command, as well as four of the larger interstation shuttles used to
ferry stores and personnel from orbit to orbit. I couldn't hope to borrow
one of
those,
but after several weeks of careful organizing I was able to
carry out the plan I'd conceived some two micro-seconds after being told
I was now head of transport.

There's no need to tell how I juggled duty lists, cooked logs and fuel
registers, and persuaded my colleagues to cover up for me. All that mat
ters is that, about once a week, I would climb into my personal space
suit, strap myself to the spidery framework of a Mark III Scooter, and drift away from the station at minimum power. When I was well clear, I'd go over to full throttle, and the tiny rocket motor would hustle me
across the nine-hundred-mile gap to the observatory.

The trip took about thirty minutes, and the navigational requirements
were elementary. I could see where I was going and where I'd come
from, yet I don't mind admitting that I often felt—well, a trifle lonely—

around the mid-point of the journey. There was no other solid matter within almost five hundred miles—and it looked an awfully long way
down to Earth. It was a great help, at such moments, to tune the suit
radio to the general service band, and to listen to all the back-chat be
tween ships and stations.

At mid-flight I'd have to spin the scooter around and start braking,
and ten minutes later the observatory would be close enough for its de
tails to be visible to the unaided eye. Very shortly after that Fd drift up
to a small, plastic pressure bubble that was in the process of being fitted
out as a spectroscopic laboratory—and there would be Julie, waiting on
the other side of the air lock. . . .

I won't pretend that we confined our discussions to the latest results
in astrophysics, or the progress of the satellite construction schedule. Few
things, indeed, were further from our thoughts; and the journey home al
ways seemed to flash by at a quite astonishing speed.

It was around mid-orbit on one of those homeward trips that the
radar started to flash on my little control panel. There was something
large at extreme range, and it was coming in fast. A meteor, I told my
self—maybe even a small asteroid. Anything giving such a signal should
be visible to the eye: I read off the bearings and searched the star fields
in the indicated direction. The thought of a collision never even crossed
my mind; space is so inconceivably vast that I was thousands of times
safer than a man crossing a busy street on Earth.

There it was—a bright and steadily growing star near the foot of
Orion. It already outshone Rigel, and seconds later it was not merely a star, but had begun to show a visible disk. Now it was moving as fast as
I could turn my head; it grew to a tiny, misshaped moon, then dwindled
and shrank with that same silent, inexorable speed.

I suppose I had a clear view of it for perhaps half a second, and that half-second has haunted me all my life. The—object—had already van
ished by the time I thought of checking the radar again, so I had no way
of gauging how close it came, and hence how large it really was. It could
have been a small object a hundred feet away—or a very large one, ten
miles off. There is no sense of perspective in space, and unless you know what you are looking at, you cannot judge its distance.

Of course, it
could
have been a very large and oddly shaped meteor;
I can never be sure that my eyes, straining to grasp the details of so
swiftly moving an object, were not hopelessly deceived. I may have im
agined that I saw that broken, crumpled prow, and the cluster of dark
ports like the sightless sockets of a skull. Of one thing only was I certain,

even in that brief and fragmentary vision. If it
was
a ship, it was not one
of ours. Its shape was utterly alien, and it was very, very old.

It may be that the greatest discovery of all time slipped from my
grasp as I struggled with my thoughts midway between the two space
stations. But I had no measurements of speed or direction; whatever it
was that I had glimpsed was now lost beyond recapture in the wastes of
the solar system.

What should I have done? No one would ever have believed me, for
I would have had no proof. Had I made a report, there would have been endless trouble. I should have become the laughingstock of the Space Service, would have been reprimanded for misuse of equipment—and would certainly not have been able to see Julie again. And to me, at that
age, nothing else was as important. If you've been in love yourself, you'll
understand; if not, then no explanation is any use.

So I said nothing. To some other man (how many centuries hence?)
will go the fame for proving that we were not the first-born of the children
of the sun. Whatever it may be that is circling out there on its eternal
orbit can wait, as it has waited ages already.

Yet I sometimes wonder. Would I have made a report, after all—
had I known that Julie was going to marry someone else?

THE CALL OF THE STARS

D
own there on Earth the twentieth century is dy
ing. As I look across at the shadowed globe blocking the stars, I can see
the lights of a hundred sleepless cities, and there are moments when I
wish that I could be among the crowds now surging and singing in the
streets of London, Capetown, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Madrid. . . . Yes, I
can see them all at a single glance, burning like fireflies against the
darkened planet. The line of midnight is now bisecting Europe: in the eastern Mediterranean a tiny, brilliant star is pulsing as some exuberant
pleasure ship waves her searchlights to the sky. I think she is deliberately aiming at us; for the past few minutes the flashes have been quite regular
and startlingly bright. Presently I'll call the communications center and
find out who she is, so that I can radio back our own greetings.

Passing into history now, receding forever down the stream of time,
is the most incredible himdred years the world has ever seen. It opened
with the conquest of the air, saw at its mid-point the unlocking of the
atom—and now ends with the bridging of space.