The Past Through Tomorrow (51 page)

He tried to keep his past life shut out of his mind, but his memory of it was still fresh; he would find himself day-dreaming—the star-sharp, frozen sky of Mars, or the roaring night life of Venusburg. He would see again the swollen, ruddy bulk of Jupiter hanging over the port on Ganymede, its oblate bloated shape impossibly huge and crowding the sky.

Or he might, for a time, feel again the sweet quiet of the long watches on the lonely reaches between the planets. But such reveries were dangerous; they cut close to the edge of his new peace of mind. It was easy to slide over and find himself clinging for life to his last handhold on the steel sides of the
Valkyrie
, fingers numb and failing, and nothing below him but the bottomless well of space.

Then he would come back to Earth, shaking uncontrollably and gripping his chair or the workbench.

The first time it had happened at work he had found one of his bench-mates, Joe Tully, staring at him curiously. “What’s the trouble, Bill?” he had asked. “Hangover?”

“Nothing,” he had managed to say. “Just a chill.”

“You better take a pill. Come on—let’s go to lunch.”

Tully led the way to the elevator; they crowded in. Most of the employees—even the women—preferred to go down via the drop chute, but Tully always used the elevator. “Saunders”, of course, never used the drop chute; this had eased them into the habit of lunching together. He knew that the chute was safe, that, even if the power should fail, safety nets would snap across at each floor level—but he could not force himself to step off the edge.

Tully said publicly that a drop-chute landing hurt his arches, but he confided privately to Saunders that he did not trust automatic machinery. Saunders nodded understandingly but said nothing. It warmed him toward Tully. He began feeling friendly and not on the defensive with another human being for the first time since the start of his new life. He began to want to tell Tully the truth about himself. If he could be sure that Joe would not insist on treating him as a hero—not that he really objected to the role of hero. As a kid, hanging around spaceports, trying to wangle chances to go inside the ships, cutting classes to watch take-offs, he had dreamed of being a “hero” someday, a hero of the spaceways, returning in triumph from some incredible and dangerous piece of exploration. But he was troubled by the fact that he still had the same picture of what a hero should look like and how he should behave; it did not include shying away from open windows, being fearful of walking across an open square, and growing too upset to speak at the mere thought of boundless depths of space.

Tully invited him home for dinner. He wanted to go, but fended off the invitation while he inquired where Tully lived. The Shelton Homes, Tully told him, naming one of those great, boxlike warrens that used to disfigure the Jersey flats. “It’s a long way to come back,” Saunders said doubtfully, while turning over in his mind ways to get there without exposing himself to the things he feared.

“You won’t have to come back,” Tully assured him. “We’ve got a spare room. Come on. My old lady does her own cooking—that’s why I keep her.”

“Well, all right,” he conceded. “Thanks, Joe.” The La Guardia Tube would take him within a quarter of a mile; if he could not find a covered way he would take a ground cab and close the shades.

Tully met him in the hall and apologized in a whisper. “Meant to have a young lady for you, Bill. Instead we’ve got my brother-in-law. He’s a louse. Sorry.”

“Forget it, Joe. I’m glad to be here.” He was indeed. The discovery that Bill’s flat was on the thirty-fifth floor had dismayed him at first, but he was delighted to find that he had no feeling of height. The lights were on, the windows occulted, the floor under him was rock solid; he felt warm and safe. Mrs. Tully turned out in fact to be a good cook, to his surprise—he had the bachelor’s usual distrust of amateur cooking. He let himself go to the pleasure of feeling at home and safe and wanted; he managed not even to hear most of the aggressive and opinionated remarks of Joe’s in-law.

After dinner he relaxed in an easy chair, glass of beer in hand, and watched the video screen. It was a musical comedy; he laughed more heartily than he had in months. Presently the comedy gave way to a religious program, the National Cathedral Choir; he let it be, listening with one ear and giving some attention to the conversation with the other.

The choir was more than half way through
Prayer for Travelers
before he became fully aware of what they were singing:

He wanted to switch it off, but he had to hear it out, he could not stop listening to it, though it hurt him in his heart with the unbearable homesickness of the hopelessly exiled. Even as a cadet this one hymn could fill his eyes with tears; now he kept his face turned away from the others to try to hide from them the drops wetting his cheeks.

When the choir’s “amen” let him do so he switched quickly to some other—any other—program and remained bent over the instrument, pretending to fiddle with it, while he composed his features. Then he turned back to the company, outwardly serene, though it seemed to him that anyone could see the hard, aching knot in his middle.

The brother-in-law was still sounding off.

“We ought to annex ’em,” he was saying. “That’s what we ought to do. Three-Planets Treaty—what, a lot of ruddy rot! What right have they got to tell us what we can and can’t do on Mars?”

“Well, Ed,” Tully said mildly, “it’s their planet, isn’t it? They were there first.”

Ed brushed it aside. “Did we ask the Indians whether or not they wanted us in North America? Nobody has any right to hang on to something he doesn’t know how to use. With proper exploitation—”

“You been speculating, Ed?”

“Huh? It wouldn’t be speculation if the government wasn’t made up of a bunch of weak-spined old women. ‘Rights of Natives,’ indeed. What rights do a bunch of degenerates have?”

Saunders found himself contrasting Ed Schultz with Knath Sooth, the only Martian he himself had ever known well. Gentle Knath, who had been old before Ed was born, and yet was rated as young among his own kind. Knath…why, Knath could sit for hours with a friend or trusted acquaintance, saying nothing, needing to say nothing. “Growing together” they called it—his entire race had so grown together that they had needed no government, until the Earthman came.

Saunders had once asked his friend why he exerted himself so little, was satisfied with so little. More than an hour passed and Saunders was beginning to regret his inquisitiveness when Knath replied, “My fathers have labored and I am weary.”

Saunders sat up and faced the brother-in-law. “They are not degenerate.”

“Huh? I suppose
you
are an expert!”

“The Martians aren’t degenerate, they’re just tired,” Saunders persisted.

Tully grinned. His brother-in-law saw it and became surly. “What gives you the right to an opinion? Have you ever been to Mars?”

Saunders realized suddenly that he had let his censors down. “Have you?” he answered cautiously.

“That’s beside the point. The best minds all agree—” Bill let him go on and did not contradict him again. It was a relief when Tully suggested that, since they all had to be up early, maybe it was about time to think about beginning to get ready to go to bed.

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 knot-head 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 space 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 space—

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 spaceman’s traditional fondness for cats, he would have investigated. However, he liked cats for themselves, quite aside from their neat shipboard habits, their ready adaptability to changing accelerations, and their usefulness in keeping the ship 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 shied 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 his 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 washing 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 Ship
Valkyrie
was two hundred and forty-nine days out from Earth-Luna Space Terminal and approaching Mars Terminal on Deimos, outer Martian satellite. William Cole, Chief Communications Officer and relief pilot, was sleeping sweetly when his assistant 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 ship and I’ll go out and fix it. I can jury-rig a replacement while she loses her spin.”