Songs From the Stars (28 page)

The vision seemed to speak with a great soundless voice in the center of Lou's soul. Behold, it said. Behold my grandeur. Behold my living beauty. And behold what you've done to me.

"I sure hope there really are wiser beings out there than us," Sue said wanly. "After seeing what we've done to our world, the thought that we're the highest form of consciousness there is doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

"I've got the Big Ear on the acquisition radar," Harker said in a tense, tightly controlled voice. "Initiate rendezvous program." The Spacer was hunched down over his controls, staring fixedly at the glowing round screen as he punched in the computer program.

A series of small hisses and shudders and then the Earth seemed to shift slightly outside the window. For a moment, it seemed to have left its proper position in the heavens, and it took Lou another moment to realize that it was the angle of his vision that had shifted. Then there was a momentary roar and the spaceship creaked and rattled. Then once again calm drifting silence.

"Course correction completed," Harker said woodenly, still hunkered over the radar screen. He hadn't taken his eyes off it.

"Are you all right?"

"All systems... all systems are working nominally...," Harker said shrilly. "We should rendezvous with the Big Ear in approximately twenty minutes."

"Well I guess there's nothing to do until then but lean back and enjoy the view."

Harker still didn't look up from his radar screen.

"Are you sure you're all right? You're not going to—"

"I have to be all right, don't I?" the Spacer said thickly. "I've been trained all my life for this..."

"No one can be trained for this," Lou said. "There's no scenario for this experience." Even in its wounded agony, the Earth was beautiful and alive from this perspective, and perhaps the scars only added a frisson of tragedy to its soul-stirring glory, an emotional dimension that was, alas, all too human.

Arnold Harker looked up at the planet for a moment. "I fear that you're right," he whispered, then sank back into contemplation of his screens and instruments. Apparently not every master could walk his own way.

Time seemed to crawl to Sunshine Sue. The spacesuit chafed, her body itched inside it, the air she breathed stank of chemicals and her own sweat, and she was becoming all too aware that she was trapped inside the bucket of her helmet, inside a frail metal capsule, floating in a cold hard blackness whose touch was death.

And Arnold Harker wasn't exactly making it any easier to take. Crouched to no purpose over his controls, muttering monosyllabically to any attempt to snap him out of it, the Spacer had not exactly come into his expected glory. A vibe of terror came off him, a far too literal perception of their true fragility and danger which began to infect her by osmosis.

You poor bastard! she thought. This is your dream, and the reality of it is scaring you shitless. Empathy or not, however, she wished he would keep his bummer vibes to himself. For the vision of the Earth that revealed itself beyond this claustrophobic tomb of metal inspired both sadness and hope, terror and promise. Terror in its living vulnerability, sadness in its ravaged state, and the promise of hope in the world seen whole—the hope that one day all the world might see itself as one through the magic of the world broadcast network, the dream that had led her to dare this place.

If only Arnold—

"Over there!" Lou shouted. "That must be it!"

The upper edge of something enormous was drifting into vision, seemingly from underneath the spaceship, a huge round fisherman's net cast up out of the dark sea before them.

"That's it all right," Harker said dully, finally looking up from the mechanical world of his screens and controls. "The Big Ear antenna..."

In another moment, Sue saw the thing entire.

A celestial fishnet a mile across floated before them in the nothingness, a spiderweb of wire spun out on an impossibly thin round framework of metal girders. A metal tube connected the antenna with the hub of a huge metal wagon wheel spinning in space; a round windowed rim and four quartering spokes, each about five hundred feet from rim to hub. The axle that connected the antenna to the wheel became a thin girder-work spire as it pierced it, supporting four rectangular metal paddles like a windmill's sails frozen in the breezeless void.

"The Big Ear," Harker said tonelessly. "The greatest work of the Age of Space..."

"Yeah, but what is it?" Sue asked. "I've never seen anything like it in my life." Nothing had quite prepared her for this; it wasn't merely huge and strange, it was visually incomprehensible.

"The antenna is the largest listening device ever built by men," Harker said. "Nothing so large could ever be constructed on Earth. The blades on the wheel are the solar panels that power the station. And the wheel itself... the wheel itself is the crew's quarters, where the spin gives you weight, and there'll be air and warmth, and we can get out of these horrible suits, and..."

The Spacer's voice had been getting faster and shriller, until he seemed to finally choke back his hysteria by sheer act of will. "Got to dock it somehow," he said nervously. "Docking port's on the tube between the Ear and the wheel, so we're going to have to fly between them... Please don't disturb my concentration; this is going to be bad enough as it is..."

Gazing fixedly out the window, Harker fiddled with his controls. The nose of the spaceship came down and around until it was pointed straight at the tube in the massive canyon between the wheel and the antenna. The rockets roared for an instant, and then the spaceship began to slide forward into the narrow cleft between the giant spiderweb and the dangerously spinning spokes.

Although there was nothing pretty or graceful about it, Clear Blue Lou had to admire the way the clearly terrified Harker managed to maneuver the spaceship between the stationary antenna and the spinning wheel with dozens of tiny corrections and re-corrections from the control rockets, easing it down onto a big metal plate slung laterally across the connecting tube at less than the speed of a walking man.

The landing slab was connected to the tube by a series of large springs, and two huge metal scimitars were slung out from each side of the slab like quarterhoops of a barrel large enough to enclose the Enterprise. As the spaceship clanged roughly onto the landing slab, the four quarterhoops banged closed overhead to secure the ship to the Big Ear, as if a giant trap had been sprung.

"Docking completed," Harker said shakily. Lou heard his long exhale of breath over the radio, a tinny sigh of released tension.

"Nice piece of flying, Arnold," he said.

"I'm glad I won't have to do that again," Harker whispered hoarsely. "It'll be a lot less delicate on the way out."

"Now what?" Sue asked.

Harker stared silently out the window.

"I said, now what?"

"Now... now we collect our food packs, hook up the Enterprise's air and water tanks to the station's intake lines, and enter the access tube through a hatch," Harker finally said. "But... but it means we have to go out there. We have to walk in space."

"Fantastic!" Sunshine Sue exclaimed, standing on the metal landing slab, held down only by the small magnets in the spacesuit's boots. To her left, the great wheel arched high above her, sweeping grandly across the heavens in its stately revolution; to her right, the Big Ear antenna was a lacework of silver that seemed to trap an infinite school of stars. The Earth loomed low overhead, an immense living jewel that utterly humbled even this grandest construction of man. Weightlessly, soundlessly, she stood in the naked heavens gazing down upon her world like a god.

Then Arnold Harker shattered the glorious moment. He came scuttling across the landing slab, dragging two hoses from the ship, a picture of mundane drudgery. "The intake valves should be right by the access hatch, and that should be right below where you're standing," he babbled frantically as he pushed between Sue and Lou. "Yes, there it is, and here's the ladder."

He scrambled over the edge of the landing slab, still dragging his hoses, and crawled down a metal ladder to the curving tube below.

Sue watched him screw the hose nozzles into two holes set into the curve of metal close by a round door. "Well, come on, what are you waiting for?" his shrill impatient voice said over the radio.

"We'd better go," Lou said, climbing down the ladder. "I don't think our sorcerer is enjoying the view."

"Lou! He can hear us!" Sue hissed. Arnold seemed pretty close to the edge as it was, and they certainly couldn't afford to freak him out further.

"No, I'm not enjoying the view," Harker said grimly when they had reached the hatch. "I just want to get inside and get out of this suit before I... before I..."

Sue heard him choke back a gag, even as he kneeled down beside a panel of labeled switches beside the access hatch. "Air feed... on," he muttered hoarsely, throwing a switch. "Water feed... on. Lights... on." He hesitated over a fourth switch. "Transport cable? What's that? It's not in our specifications."

"But it sounds like something we could use," Sue offered.

"If it can draw power with the electrical system in the standby mode," Harker said, throwing the final switch.

He turned a wheel set in the center of the round door, pulled it open, and crawled inside.

Following Lou inside after the Spacer, Sue found herself floating in a long wide tunnel, its far end lost in perspective. Rows of lights arrowed down into the gloom. Two braided steel cables slid like snakes up and down the center of the tunnel, one going and one coming.

Turning, Sue saw that the two cables were really one, reeling about a wheel spun by a humming engine fastened to the round plate at this end of the tunnel.

Harker closed the hatch, staring at the moving cables. "I don't know how this works..." he stammered. "There's nothing about this in the specifications we've preserved..."

"It's simple!" Sue shouted, pushing off the wall with her feet, like a swimmer making a turn in a pool, arms outstretched as if in a dive. "You just grab on and catch a ride!"

So saying, she clamped her hands about the inward bound cable and was yanked down the tunnel at exhilarating speed.

"Sue! Are you all right?" She heard Lou's voice through the speakers close by her ears even as she was whisked out of sight.

"I'm fine!" she said. "Come along, you'll enjoy the ride!"

"Whoo-ee!" Clear Blue Lou laughed as he let go of the cable, bounced gently up against the round hatch at the end of the tunnel and the breathless cable ride, and floated about like a drifting balloon alongside Sue and Harker.

The Spacer was already fiddling with yet another control panel, this one festooned with whole rows of switches. It had taken some persuading to get him to ride the cable, and he had screamed and moaned on the radio all the way. How sad, how ironic, that the Spacer, who had pointed his whole life toward this reality, could not enjoy it like a natural man. Now he was throwing switches left and right, mumbling under his breath, and choking back gags. "Crew quarters life support system... on. Gurgh! Crew quarters electrical system... Urk!... on. Main switch... on..."

"What are you doing now?" Sue asked, swimming over to watch him with a kick of her legs against the wall.

"Turning on the systems that were shut down when the crew put the station in standby mode," Harker grunted. "This hatch leads to the main airlock. Soon the wheel will have light and heat and air. And we can get out of these suits and... and..." He choked back another gag with a disgusting liquid gurgle.

Then he spun the lockwheel, opened the hatch, and vaulted into the airlock. As Lou started to follow him, he heard the Spacer scream. Then he was inside and saw the reason why.

A roped-together chain of human corpses floated in the center of the cylindrical airlock like a string of unspeakable sausages, neatly secured to rings screwed into the curving wall. Eight men and six women—naked, desiccated, and cured to a tough brown like too-old leather. Strung across the airlock like wash hung out to dry.

"Oh no..." Sue gasped as she vaulted in beside him.

"Oh, look at this!" Harker shrilled, pointing to neat lettering in red paint on a portion of the curved wall. "They committed suicide! They killed themselves!"

Lou peered wonderingly at the meticulous hand lettering.

To the relief expedition, if one ever comes. We've taken our cyanide capsules together rather than wait for the inevitable. There is a prepared briefing tape in the main computer room, where all data is stored, catalogued, and preserved. We've put all life-support systems in standby mode to extend their useful life as long as possible. If you are reading this, then there is still hope for our sorry species. We request that you give us a Christian burial together in space.

"They would have had to tie themselves together, cycled the air out of the airlock, and then calmly taken poison," Harker croaked. "Just to... just to preserve their bodies for us to find! Why would they do a hideous thing like that? What do they mean, a Christian burial in space?"

"I don't know what a Christian burial is either, but I think I understand the vibe," Lou said softly. "Is there a hatch to the outside here?"