Station in Space Read online

  “Yes."

  “Your first?"

  Phillips smiled involuntarily. “To the Little Wheel."

  “Then you have an experience in store."

  “I expect you're right.” Phillips’ smile broadened.

  “We'll be going out together,” the boy said with great enthusiasm.

  “Fine.” Phillips grinned.

  The lieutenant looked sheepish. “I beg your pardon, sir. I talk too much, don't I? It's just that I'm returning from a short leave, and I can't wait to get back. My name is Grant. Jack Grant."

  Grant, Phillips thought. Both parents living, happily married. Normally affectionate family relationship. Older brother a solar power engineer. Younger sister in high school. Normal adolescent sexual experiences. Six months service outside. Well-adjusted personality for his age when he left the Academy.

  Phillips frowned. He didn't fit into the pattern at all. Why had he gone out? “Lloyd Phillips,” he said.

  Grant went on chattering unabashed, telling Phillips about the Academy, about the Wheel, about his recent leave and the girl he had met and what they had done—stopping just short of the fine line between gentleman and jerk. His appetite for experience and his unquenchable good humor were infectious. He reminded Phillips of a playful puppy, bounding violently, his stub of a tail shaking his body all over with its gyrations. Phillips thawed once more in spite of himself and gave the boy a verbal pat on the head occasionally.

  “What kind of man is Colonel Danton?” Phillips asked casually.

  Grant's smile faded. He looked serious for a moment and said, “A very good officer, sir. A brilliant commander, completely loyal to his men and gets their loyalty in return. Dedicated, sir. Works harder than anyone."

  Phillips smiled encouragingly. “You can speak frankly, Jack. I'll tell you something. Can you keep it under your hat?” He went on in a confidential murmur without waiting for an answer. “I'm a psychologist assigned to the Little Wheel. One of my jobs is to determine whether Danton is emotionally qualified for a position whose responsibility is almost beyond comprehension.” That was true, certainly, although not in the sense that Grant would take it. “You can help me."

  “You put me in a difficult position, sir. I'd like to help you, but I just can't."

  Then there was something to tell. “This isn't tattling, Jack. It's much more important than that."

  Grant shook his head grimly. “I'm sorry, sir. You'll have to find out for yourself."

  Phillips nodded approvingly, discovering that his opinion of the boy was rising steadily. “That's all right. I understand how you feel."

  Grant could not stay withdrawn for more than a few moments. Soon he was baring his normal young soul as freely as ever.

  Fifteen minutes later Lieutenant Kars came through the broad, glass-doored entrance. He wore blue coveralls, a webbed flight belt across his chest, and a somber expression on his dark face.

  Joseph Kars, 23, only child of a widowed mother—Phillips had time to think before Kars said curtly, “Let's go, Captain. We can't wait all night."

  “About time,” Phillips said gently. “I've been waiting for two days."

  Kars looked at him out of cold, black eyes. “It's never about time, Captain. It's time or it isn't. Pick up the Captain's spacepack, Grant,” he snapped. He turned on his heel.

  Phillips turned quickly to pick up his own luggage, but Grant already had it in his hand. He grinned at the psychologist.

  Phillips looked at him helplessly and back at Kars as if comparing the two and then followed the unrelenting back into the night.

  * * * *

  They walked across the pitted, concrete landing field toward the skyscraper-tall three-stage rocket, broad-finned at the bottom, its wings even broader at the top. Grant was some twenty yards behind. Phillips didn't look at the shuttle. He was looking at Kars.

  There is a sameness to them, he thought. A dedication, a mania that molds their features, a look to the eyes as if they were fashioned for seeing more distant vistas than other men. There were all shapes and colors and faces, but the differences only emphasized their kinship. They came from identical molds labeled: “Experiment—Homo Spatium."

  They were marked men. Marked not just by the deep tan of unfiltered ultraviolet or the cataracts of heavy primaries but by a common experience and a dream shared, marked so that all men might know them and say, “There goes a spaceman."

  All except Grant. He was too normal. He didn't belong. Phillips felt a surge of affection for Grant, as if they were brothers who had just recognized that they were among aliens.

  “What held us up, Joe?” Phillips asked casually.

  “If you don't mind, Captain, call me Kars or Lieutenant"

  “All right, Lieutenant. What was the trouble?"

  “No trouble, Captain."

  “Two days’ delay, and you call it no trouble?"

  Kars glanced at him silently as if weighing Phillips’ powers of understanding. Then he pointed at the shuttle, standing tall and partially illuminated on the otherwise dark field. But there was life around. Somewhere animals roared in their testing frames, spitting flame and power, shaking the ground. It was like walking through a zoo at night, wondering if the bars are strong enough.

  “That's a beast there, Captain,” Kars said flatly, “a savage, viciously unpredictable beast straining at a leash, waiting to kill me if I overlook one small item in an endless list of precautions.

  “I'm in command of that thing. It doesn't move until I'm satisfied that it's ready. Every relay, every pump, every gauge must be working perfectly; every connection must be solid; every line must be clean. Or blam! No more crew, no more Joseph Kars, no more Captain Lloyd Phillips. And no cargo for the Wheel.

  “We inspect every part personally, Captain. Does that I surprise you?"

  “No. Something was wrong then?"

  “We weren't sure everything was right"

  “I'm glad you told me. I would hate to be forced to report that there was deliberate delay in the execution of my orders. General Ashley wanted me on the Little Wheel yesterday."

  Kars told Phillips what he could do with General Ashley. “Besides,” he concluded mildly, “there's always the possibility of sabotage. One of the crew must stand guard over the shuttle at all times."

  “Enemy sabotage?” Phillips said, surprised.

  Kars’ unreadable black eyes looked at him. “After the red tape you went through, you think an enemy agent could get in here?"

  “Did Colonel Danton tell you that? What's wrong with him?"

  “Captain,” Kars said icily, “we didn't have to be told. As for the Colonel—he's the greatest man who ever lived!"

  As they climbed up concrete steps onto the takeoff platform, the ship had grown so tall that it seemed about to topple over on them. They approached the giant hammerhead crane beside the shuttle. Grant's footsteps clicked behind them.

  There was a smell of old fire to the platform mingled with the sharp odor of acid and the mingled stench of old chemicals and oil. “You don't like me, Lieutenant,” Phillips said bluntly. “Why?"

  “I don't dislike you, Captain,” Kars said without expression. “I don't feel anything about you at all except for a general distaste for all witch doctors. I had enough of them at the Academy. They ask the wrong questions, Captain.

  “If I resent you, it's because you're taking up space that might be occupied by someone useful. If we didn't have to lift you, we could lift another bottle of oxygen. We can breathe oxygen, Captain."

  “And I'm dead weight,” Phillips said cheerfully. “Okay, Lieutenant. Man proposes, but the Air Force disposes. I've got my orders, too, and I can stand it if you can."

  Grant joined them in the elevator that was part of the crane's framework. It lifted them up the side of the ship, and they climbed through the thick, square doorway. Kars followed more slowly. Grant stowed away Phillips’ spacepack and swarmed up a ladder toward four helmeted heads.

 
Kars motioned Phillips into a gimbaled chair. “That's yours,” he said, and went on to the pilot's chair above.

  With quick, sure competence, Phillips buckled himself in, chuckling softly. So this was the way it was going to be: a test for the psychologist.

  Let them have their fun, he thought. They'll need it.

  After the interminable drone of the check-off, the lifting of the shuttle took him by surprise. Kars gave no warning on the intercom; there was suddenly more than half a ton of lead sitting on his chest, squeezing the breath out of his body, refusing to let him draw in more.

  His head was turned slightly to the side, forced deep into the cushions, and he could not move it. Outside the night flamed red and yellow and white, until he had to shut his eyes against the brilliance. The ship trembled and shuddered and shook, and the roaring of the rocket motors was everywhere, pervading every tortured cell of his body.

  After a brief surcease, in which Phillips noticed that the light outside had disappeared and his blinded eyes could see only a sooty blackness, the weight descended again. This time, as the second stage took up the job of acceleration, the pressure lasted for almost a minute.

  As the second stage cut off and dropped away, Phillips took a deep, rasping breath. By comparison, the third-stage acceleration was almost unnoticeable.

  Suddenly, then, the all-pervading vibration was gone. The motors were silent, and Phillips was falling.

  He gripped the chair arms with clawing hands. This is illusion, he told himself desperately. What sent his senses reeling into the eternal night was the absence of acceleration pressure, was the release of the ear's otolith organs from the tug of gravity...

  His stomach rebelled. Bitter acids spurted into his mouth, and he swallowed hard...

  Free fall, he told himself. In that sense I am falling, as all men fall when there is no resistance to the pull of gravity. But in actuality I am coasting upward into the abyss of night, protected from its hungry vacuum, from its extremes of heat and cold, by sturdy metal walls and the flower of man's engineering and craftsmanship.

  Falling, true, but falling—up!

  Phillips took a few deep breaths and a sensation of unusual well-being spread through his body. He was one of the lucky ones. After a few uncomfortable moments of transition, zero gravity was a delight to him.

  Phillips looked around. Grant was beside him, on the other side of the ladder, but the boy was having more difficulties. His face was white, and his jaw was set grimly.

  The earphones popped, and Kars’ sardonic voice came to Phillips clearly. “Okay, Captain?"

  “Very nice, Lieutenant,” Phillips said cheerfully. “Best lift I can remember.” And that, he thought, should end the hazing from that quarter.

  Then there was no time for talk: the crew was too busy with problems of navigation and determining the final burst of acceleration that would stabilize the ship's orbit at 1,075 miles out where they would intercept the orbit of the Little Wheel.

  For Phillips the time passed swiftly. Grant was still in no mood for conversation, but the psychologist watched the stars through the clear, plastic canopy. They had always fascinated him; they were so different from the twinkling, filtered, untouchable fireflies of Earth's night. Out here—Phillips recognized the transition in his vocabulary—they were clear, steady, many colored, and almost within reach.

  That, too, was illusion. As a psychologist he knew that Ashley's article of faith was fact: Men are Earth creatures. Nowhere else could Man exist in more than a marginal, half-starved sense. No other soil would nourish him; no other world would ever be home.

  And even if somewhere in the infinite universe there were a world which would not be poison to his respiration or alimentation or the delicate balance of his metabolism, even if the fantastic problems of reaching the nearer stars—even the nearer planets of the solar system—were solved, were capable of solution, there must still be men to go on the long, long voyage out. Within the thin walls of a weightless metal prison, there must be men, and within the men there must be minds to know the ultimate fears and go mad.

  The two artificial satellites were special cases. They were Earth environment canned and transported at incredible expense into orbits around the home world, and whenever the psychological pressures grew unbearable, a man could look out and see the warm, nourishing bosom of his mother only hours away.

  A new voice broke into Phillips’ reverie. It wasn't one of the crew members; he had become attuned to them. This voice was carefree, almost chuckling.

  “Okay, Joe,” it said. “You've got your bearings; don't spare the hydrazine. And be careful with the supercargo.” It laughed. “We wouldn't want anything to happen to the General's errand boy."

  * * * *

  The freed third stage had slid into sunlight. The glare was dazzling, blotting out the stars. The Earth—below? above?—spanned half the sky. It recalled to Phillips the mosaic in General Ashley's office. The difference was that this was real, and he was Outside, floating 1,075 miles above the world beneath with its blue-black oceans, its thin-cotton clouds covering almost half the planet, its dull, brownish-yellowish-greenish continents distorted almost beyond recognizability at the edges of the hemisphere, all framed by a whitish haze. This was real, and it was majestic and frightening.

  On the other side, the gleaming-white, two-spoked Wheel, spinning slowly, was a triumphant thing, dazzling the eyes where the sun burned back from its rim. It was a silver ring for a giant's finger waiting on the black-velvet cushion of the night.

  Phillips waited in his spacesuit for the sausage-shaped taxi that would take him to it. Not far from the Wheel was a vast circle of coated metal, shining mirrorlike in the sunlight. But it could not be a mirror—not a weapon for concentrating the sun's rays on an enemy city like a burning glass on an ant hill nor a reflector for lighting the friendly night or warming the polar ice. It was pointed at right angles to Earth.

  Beyond the Wheel was another structure. Phillips couldn't make out what it was supposed to be; the Wheel concealed much of it. But it was an ungainly contraption of rocket motors and spherical tanks bolted flimsily together.

  A man was waiting in the zero-gravity Hub to help Phillips out of his cumbersome suit, a man with a hard, deeply tanned face and snow-white hair—cosmic ray damage to follicles did that. He wore the loose-fitting coveralls of an ordinary spaceman. They were ragged at cuff and neck, and there was no insignia.

  Non-reg uniform, Phillips noted. Sloppy at that.

  The man was slim and a little over medium height as near as Phillips could judge without his accustomed yardsticks of perspective and familiar surroundings. The contrast of his colorless hair and eyebrows with the dark face was dramatic. In fact, the man looked surprisingly like ailing General Pickrell, even to the cataract-flecked eyes, but then he grinned and the resemblance vanished.

  “Captain Phillips?” he said easily, floating without a handhold in mid-air. “Colonel Amos Danton at your service."

  Phillips gave a start of surprise and tried to cover it by shooting out a hand to meet Danton's. But it overshot its mark and had to fumble its way back with an air of embarrassment. Muscles don't learn quickly, Phillips noted.

  “Glad to meet you, Colonel Danton,” he said, “but I want to correct one misapprehension. I'm a little too old to be an errand boy."

  “I hadn't thought there was any age limit on it.” Danton grinned. “But seeing you now, I'm inclined to agree. Don't mind me. I'm frank to the point of brutality."

  “Then I hope you'll continue to be frank with me, Colonel. I have a difficult job to do, and I'll need all the help I can get."

  “I know."

  “You know what my job is?” Phillips asked sharply.

  “Shall I quote your orders?"

  “Spies?"

  “Call them spies if you like.” Danton's face hardened. “There are spies around me now. Saboteurs. Enemies.” He took a deep breath and brought his voice back to its original lightne
ss. He shrugged. The gesture spun him gently, but he stopped it almost without effort. “We think of them as grounded spacemen. Once a spaceman always a spaceman."

  “What would you call me?"

  “Neither fish nor fowl, Captain. You're an ocean dweller with air sacs capable of absorbing oxygen from the atmosphere, but you haven't made up your mind whether it wouldn't be better, after all, to crawl back into the secure, buoyant womb of the sea."

  “I disagree with your analysis and your analogy, Colonel.”

  “That's your privilege. But all this formality makes me nervous.” Almost as he spoke, his eyelid jerked. “We don't worry much out here about spit and polish. My name is Amos. I'll call you Lloyd. Okay?"

  Phillips nodded agreeably and began a series of lazy somersaults that he didn't try to stop because he didn't know how. Perhaps it would not be as difficult as he had imagined, he thought. Danton might be as cracked a pot as Ashley believed him or as great a man as Kars had called him or as tainted as Grant had suggested, but he had no obvious chip on his shoulder. Phillips had a shrewd idea how to turn him into an active ally. Feeling a little silly about the somersaults, he said, “If you know my job, then I hope you'll see that I get the cooperation it demands."

  “Sure,” Danton said. “You came out to tear down the Wheel. Go to it. If you can do it, the Wheel doesn't deserve to be out here. You'll get cooperation. And if any of the boys give you trouble, come to me. They don't like you, you know. Not only are they rather attached to this old Wheel, but you're going to slow down a job they know is important, and you're going to occupy premium space and consume valuable oxygen and food.” His eyelid jerked. “But they'll cooperate—or else."

  As if he had suddenly tired of the conversation, he caught Phillips’ hand as it came around and gave it a quick pull which stopped the somersaults and shot Phillips into one of the pipelike spokes. Phillips reached out just in time to catch a rung of the rope ladder that lined the side of the tunnel. Danton, rebounding from the other side of the Hub with bent knees thrusting, was beside him immediately.