Station in Space Read online

  But he was falling, hurtling downward from a tremendous cliff, tumbling helplessly and unchecked into infinite depths...

  He clawed at the chair arms, gripped them until the veins stood out, ropy and blue, in the whiteness. His breath sucked in, rasping. He held it, every muscle braced for the impact...

  That never came. The pit was bottomless.

  It was illusion! The fall reflex. Babies have it; kittens, lowered suddenly, claw wildly for support.

  He was falling, he told himself. He was falling away from the Earth, coasting upwards at more than 18,000 miles per hour, without that resistance to the pull of gravity which conveys a sensation of weight.

  Slowly he let his breath sigh out. Slowly he relaxed stubbornly resisting muscles. He let himself fall.

  He opened his eyes and looked up, seeing the seats and helmets above him. For a moment it helped, and then his gravi-receptors told him that this was illusion—there was no up, no down. He was falling in all directions at once.

  The cabin was spinning around him. He fought the sensation, fought the feeling of nausea that gripped his throat and stomach. His face perspired, grew cold. A moment later he was violently sick in the plastic bag.

  It was almost half an hour before the spasms ceased.

  Dimly, through his agony, he heard voices:

  “Fuel reserve..."

  “Skin temperature one thousand..."

  “Velocity eighteen thousand four..."

  “Altitude..."

  “Cocoa. Check flight path..."

  “On the straight and narrow, Folly..."

  “Check. Keep us posted will you? Let's make this a nice easy ride—papa's tired."

  Heat was a problem. By the time the third-stage left the last thin traces of atmosphere behind, the temperature of the hull was 1,000° F.

  The refrigeration equipment, massive enough to cool a ten-story office building, labored to keep the cabin livable. It took four hours for the ship to reach equilibrium temperature.

  The crew couldn't sit back and sweat it out. They had jobs to do. In coasting to the 1,075-mile altitude, the ship had dropped below orbital speed. Between them, by star sights and computations, the navigator and co-pilot determined the ship's altitude. The captain pressed a button on the arm of his chair. Slowly the pattern of stars shifted over the canopy.

  Once more the captain pressed the firing button. The ship gained a little more than 1,000 miles per hour.

  They were in orbit.

  The captain spoke to the Doughnut: “Ess one point two. Folly. In orbit but blind. Give us a hand."

  The radio was silent.

  “Doughnut!” the captain roared. “Get your finger out! Give us a bearing"

  “Folly. Ess one point two. Thanks for the outburst. Gave us radio bearing. We now have visual. Following are corrections..."

  Amos hugged to himself the meaning of S.1.2; it was a mark of belonging, and at the moment it was all he had. The “S” stood for satellite, the “1” for the orbit, the “2” for the second satellite in that orbit.

  The S.1.1 was McMillen's tomb, leading the Doughnut by one hundred miles.

  With the setting of the sun, the shades had been rolled back from the canopy. The ship was in the shadow of the Earth. Amos stared into the star-speckled sky for his first glimpse of the Doughnut, but the night draped it with invisibility.

  It wasn't like the model that had hung above his bed; it didn't glow.

  “...and welcome back, Colonel,” said the voice from the Doughnut.

  The captain growled and gave the ship a gentle boost. Slowly it began to flip over.

  Beneath the—above them—the night-dark Earth appeared and swept across the canopy and gave way again to the stars. In that glimpse Amos saw the reddish glow of a city and a star-brightness near it that swept away before he could identify it. He fought back nausea; terror whispered that he was one of those unfortunates who never got over their spacesickness.

  The cruising motor turned on again briefly. Weight and fall again. The tumbling stopped. Amos took a deep, relieved breath. Framed in the canopy now, drawing the eyes like a vision of heaven, was the gently spinning wheel of the Doughnut, one great spoke connecting the rim of the wheel, bulging to a hub in the middle.

  It was there at last, barely visible, gleaming dully in the starlight. Amos forgot his nausea.

  It had been a long way to come: twenty years of dreams and five years of hell and a thousand miles—straight up.

  “If you're going over,” the captain said, close, sarcastic, “I'd advise you to slip into something a little warmer. Otherwise you might find the last few feet the hardest."

  He floated past. Amos hated him. Hated his sarcasm.

  Cautiously he released his harness straps, holding desperately to the chair arm to keep from falling. It was no use trying to fool his gravi-receptors and mechano-receptors; they knew he was failing.

  Slowly, trying to control his nausea, he floated above the ladder, pulling himself along it until he reached the rack of pressure suits. Clinging to a stanchion and struggling to fit his legs into the proper places was a far different experience than when his 150 pounds had been solid and maneuverable at the Academy. Finally he slipped his legs in and wedged one arm far enough down a sleeve to grab the hand controls.

  When he had the other arm in a sleeve, the captain was already dressed. He floated over impatiently to help with the fastenings and lower the helmet over Amos's head.

  “Radio working?” The voice was loud and harsh inside the suit.

  “Yes, sir."

  “Good. Check your suit."

  Amos stared at the face dimly visible through two faceplates of dark glass. The complete check took a good five minutes, and the suits were thoroughly inspected after and before every trip. “Yes, sir,” he said grimly.

  Step by step, joint by joint, gauge by gauge, control by control, attachment by attachment, he went through the suit-check manual. “Suit check complete, sir."

  The captain turned curtly, swinging himself by a hook around a stanchion, and caught the air-lock controls. By the time the outer door opened in front of them, bulky stevedores were dumping boxes and crates and tubes out of the cargo compartment. The ship and the three taxis hitched to one broad wing were anchors for a vast spider web of cords and safety lines.

  Amos looked up into infinity. Slowly the ship tilted; infinity was a dark mouth gaping; he was falling...

  He grabbed for the edge of the doorway. Where his hands should have been, tools banged against the hull of the ship. The impact threw him forward, arms flailing helplessly.

  As he cleared the side of the ship, Earth swung into view beneath. His orientation twisted. Panic was a live thing in his chest and throat, fluttering icy wings. He was really falling now, falling helplessly and endlessly toward death.

  He fell through impalpable space unable to tear his fascinated eyes away from the dark Earth below. Something was clanging against his suit, but it was seconds before he could look to see what it was. The captain was clinging to the handle on the chest of his suit.

  Something clicked against his waist. The captain released, him, swung around, began to recede.

  “Wait—!” Amos began, fear distorting his voice, and then he saw that a nylon safety line trailed from him to the captain.

  The ship was only a few yards away. The captain pulled himself to it by his own line and snapped Amos's cord onto a ring beside the air-lock door. Slowly he reeled Amos in like a clumsy metal fish.

  “Elementary lesson number one,” the captain said in a bored, unpleasant voice, “the moment you reach space: clip on."

  “Sorry, sir,” Amos said, his suit dripping inside with sweat.

  “That's a word we don't have much use for out here. You seldom live to use it. There's your transportation.” He pointed to one of the nearby sausages. “Jump!” Amos hesitated before the blank immensity that separated him from the taxi. Then he closed his eyes and jumped, his safety line
unreeling behind. Twice he missed and had to haul himself ignominiously back. On the third try, he caught a hook in the handle on the nose of the little two-man ship and clung.

  The captain released his safety line. It disappeared into the reel at Amos's waist.

  A round door opened out for Amos. He slipped carefully into the taxi and crawled past the suited pilot to the seat behind.

  As Amos buckled himself down, the pilot turned awkwardly in the starlight coming through the canopy and touched his helmet to Amos's. “If your radio's on, turn it off."

  The words echoed hollowly. Amos pressed the button under his left index finger. “It's off,” he said curiously.

  “Good. Privacy's hard enough to come by up here. No use broadcasting everything, eh? My name's Kovac. Lieutenant Max Kovac. You're new, aren't you?"

  “That's right. Cadet Amos Danton."

  “Glad to meet you, Amos. You don't know how glad. One more like you, and I get rotated. Then watch out, fleshpots!"

  “You been here long?"

  “Twelve long months, brother. That's twelve years by any other calendar. Just let me get my feet back on the ground, and they couldn't drag me out again with a team of wild rockets. Excuse me, Amos. We're being paged."

  From the Hub of the Doughnut came a brilliant spot of light. The taxi jockeyed sickeningly back and forth on its two jets until it was aimed at the station and then the rear jet came on full. The Doughnut swelled in front of them like a balloon, spinning. With a single correction, Kovac slipped the taxi into one of the motionless, cagelike landing berths at either side of the Hub, killing his forward speed with a brief flare of the nose motor. Amos followed Kovac into the turret, his heart beating swiftly, expectantly.

  Beyond the air lock was the Hub. Suits hung in brackets around the curving wall like gleaming white monsters. He was inside the Doughnut, Amos thought, spinning with it, a part of it. He was here.

  Amos released his helmet clamps and took a deep breath of the Doughnut's air. It smelled like a machine shop inside a bathhouse. It stank.

  Kovac was already out of his suit. He helped Amos, saying easily, “Don't let it bother you, kid. It's tough your first time out. You can't coordinate because your muscles and senses are still adjusted to gravity. Everybody goes through it. You'll get the knack. Just don't let anybody kid you. At first we're all babies learning to walk."

  He slipped the suit and helmet into an empty bracket. “Come on,” he said, launching himself toward one tunnel like a champion diver. He caught the landing net that lined one curving wall and pulled his mouth close to a microphone. “Weight control. Kovac coming in on B with new arrival Cadet Amos Danton. One-fifty?” he asked, gauging Amos's size.

  Amos nodded. After a moment a bored voice said, “Okay, you're balanced."

  They pulled themselves along the net, their weight slowly increasing, their bodies swinging gradually down toward the rim until, when they reached the little weight-control office, they were hanging from the net.

  Amos weighed forty pounds.

  In front of a compact computer and a schematic of the Doughnut dotted with small, magnetic markers sat an officer in wrinkled, khaki coveralls. “Danton?” he said, raising an eyebrow in cursory acknowledgment. “Welcome aboard, sucker."

  His face straightened as he stood up quickly, saluting. “Welcome back, Colonel."

  Someone brushed past Amos and turned, stripping off his flight helmet. It was the captain of the Folly, his hair a grizzled spacecut. “Danton, eh?” he said sourly. “Let me know when you're ready to go back in.” He stooped through a doorway and was gone.

  The weight given him by the Doughnut's spin had made Amos's empty, aching stomach feel better, but now it felt like it had a brick in it.

  How can a man dream so long, he thought desperately, and have the reality turn out so horribly?

  With his helmet off, the captain of the Folly was unmistakable. He was Colonel Frank Pickrell, commander of the Doughnut.

  General Finch had been right: the selection and the training was never enough; the job was bigger than the man; what Amos had gone through was nothing to what was waiting for him.

  To Amos it seemed that he had never been trained at all; he had to learn everything all over again. Nothing could have prepared him for no-weight. Nothing could have prepared him for the fierce, blazing reality of the sun, for the Earth like a giant, round picture framed in white haze and spanning half the field of vision, for the everyday discomforts of life aboard the Doughnut.

  There were never enough men for the jobs that had to be done if they were to justify the expense and sacrifice of putting the Doughnut into space and maintaining it there. The work day was 14 to 16 hours long, back-breaking, physical labor done under the most uncomfortable, most dangerous conditions men could endure and still stay sane.

  There was never enough space inside the Doughnut even for essentials. If it was a question of function or comfort, comfort lost. Amos's bunk was his for eight hours out of every twenty-four. The two other shifts were allowed to two other men.

  He would crawl into the bunk and lie there, too weary to sleep, and wonder if he would survive. There were times he was so homesick for the feel and look and smell of Earth that he cried into the thin pillow, pressing his face deep to muffle the sobs. There were times he would have sold his chance of promotion for ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. There were moments he almost screamed for the lost privilege of a few minutes completely alone.

  None of these were possible unless he gave up the dream. And that was the unthinkable. There were fleeting moments he would tell himself that this was fulfillment; he was out there at last—out there in the Doughnut—out with his dreams. So it meant privation and drudgery and psychological starvation—he was out there, and it was wonderful.

  It wasn't often he could convince himself. Because this wasn't his dream.

  He was given twenty-four hours to acclimate himself, but it was seven days before he could keep down solids. Specialized personnel performed an extra job in maintenance when their regular shift was over, but Amos's specialty was piloting, and he wasn't trusted with a ship. He also knew navigation, engineering, and communications, but these, too, were out of the question. He was assigned to the permanent labor force. He was a janitor, a stevedore, a handyman.

  There was little dust. The air-conditioning plant extracted the dirt and lint men brought with them from Earth, but Amos emptied wastebaskets, washed fingerprints off dials, screens, and viewports, scrubbed washrooms, polished brass ... He answered all calls for working parties; at least once a day he went out to unload a ferry and push the freight to the waiting taxis. In his spare time, he maintained the temperature regulators.

  This was a perpetual chore that kept him clinging to the meteor-bumper of the Doughnut for a minimum of six hours a day as he unscrewed the shutterlike regulators with the tools at the sleeve end of his suit and fastened a renovated regulator in its place.

  * * * *

  A week in the S.1.2, and Amos began to forget that he had ever known another life. A week: 84 revolutions of the Earth around the Doughnut; 84 sunrises, 84 sunsets, 84 nights.

  Food became less a task, more a gripe. Nausea came less frequently and almost never reached the active stage. Strength returned unnoticed. Life became less a torment, more a drudgery. By the same token, it became less a dream, more a cold reality.

  Amos fought it.

  There were men to envy in the Doughnut, the observers and the scientists: physicists, aerologists, astro-physicists, astronomer ... They were doing what they wanted to do in the best possible place to do it.

  Amos moved through the Doughnut, cleaning, watching, telling himself that this was the dream.

  For the physicists, conditions were available that had been unattainable or attainable only with great effort: weightlessness, virtually perfect vacuums, temperatures approaching absolute zero ... The physicists were in a state of perpetual excitation, like their cosmic ray counters and i
onization chambers.

  Underneath the radio ops were the aerologists and the slowly unraveling mystery of weather, seen now from above and outside. Weather had never been so predictable.

  Next came the observers, pre-empting two decks for their maps and telescopic enlargements, staring at closely guarded items of military interest. They reminded Amos of pathologists staring through microscopes at viruses and germs and cancer cells—only the things under the lens knew they were being observed and acted accordingly.

  Beyond the computer and the telescope control panel was Celestial Observation, two decks tall, where photographs of distant nebulae were projected for study. A few hundred feet from the Doughnut, a free-floating telescope was taking the finest celestial photographs man had ever seen, free from the distortions of a wavering blanket of air.

  But, in a sense quite apart from their civilian status, the scientists were a class distinct from the Air Force officers and cadets who manned the Doughnut. The scientists had never left Earth.

  For them the S.1.2 was an end in itself, created especially to serve their purposes. It existed as a platform on which to stand as they looked up or down or performed their specialized experiments.

  But Amos knew it was only a means, the first of a series of steps that led up to the moon, the planets, and the stars.

  The scientists had come out into space to look back at Earth. Amos had come out to reach the stars.

  That was the dream.

  The thirtieth day, one month: Amos was in the Hub, weightless, stealing moments from sleep to practice doggedly the esoteric techniques of movement without the aid of semicircular canals and otolith organs. He was climbing out of a suit when the loud-speaker said, “Cadet Danton. Report to Colonel Pickrell. Cadet..."

  In the middle of the A spoke, Amos passed Kovac. The lieutenant gave him a wink and an encouraging smile. “Don't let him make you mad, boy,” he whispered. “The Fish is a cold and calculating man!"

  Amos smiled briefly.

  Across the airtight door was printed: commander. Amos pressed the buzzer. The door swung open toward him. Pickrell stood behind it, his face set and hard.