Complete Short Fiction, page 321
Everything looked eerily cramped because of the abnormal narrowing effect. But the length seemed to be right.
He expected the door of the captain’s cabin to be too narrow for his spacesuit to get into. However, as he came up to it, he saw that its width was as he remembered it.
Hewitt nodded to himself. Of course, even by the Lorentz-Fitzgerald theory, that would be true. Contraction would be in the direction of flight.
Since the door was at right angles to the flight-line, the size of the doorway was not affected. The door jamb, however, could probably be narrower.
The jamb was narrower. Hewitt had stopped his suit to start at it. Now, he felt himself pale with tension.
It doesn’t fit, he told himself. Like the hall, it’s narrower only by a factor of three, whereas the air pressure varies nine hundred seventy-three to one.
Once more, he assured himself that the explanation could not possibly include the famous contraction theory. Speed was not a factor here. The Hope of Man was practically at rest, whatever its velocity might have been in the past.
He stopped that thought. I’m wasting time. I’ve got to get going.
Acutely conscious again that this was supposed to be a quick exploratory journey, he shifted the softly spinning motor into gear, and moved forward through the doorway.
As he rolled all the way into it, he saw that Captain Mark Grayson sat at a long, extremely narrow desk. He seemed to be writing something.
The grizzled space veteran sat with unnatural steadiness. He did not look up as the machine rolled nearer, though he faced the door, and was in a position to catch the slightest movement from the tops of his eyes.
It was hard in that shadowy light to see what he was doing. His eyes seemed to be looking fixedly down at a sheet of paper. But his hand, holding the pen, did not move.
Slowly, watchfully, Hewitt rolled around the desk. He was shocked, but no longer so desperately surprised when he saw that the man was only a few inches thick. Seen in front view, he looked unchanged.
From the side, he was a tall man with a head and body that looked like a caricature of a human being, such as might be seen in a badly distorted circus mirror.
Right then and there, Hewitt suspended his judgment. Some of the phenomena suggested the Lorentz-Fitzgerald effect. Even the weird light could be the result of normally invisible radiation projected to visible frequency levels.
But that was as far as it went. Most of what he had seen could only be explained if the ship were traveling simultaneously at several different speeds.
He was beside, and slightly behind Grayson now. He had to strain his eyes to see what was on the paper. He read:
Tellier is exhilarated. He informed me that yesterday, according to the instruments, we had attained a velocity of 177,000 miles per second. Today, though the pile is even hotter, there has been no change in our registered speed. He admits he can only guess at what has happ
Whatever had happened at that moment must have struck like a secret knife. Grayson had no advance warning; his writing had been cut off in mid-word. He sat here now, a mute witness to the reality that disaster could catch a man between heartbeats.
Hewitt began his retreat from the control room. His mind now was almost blank.
Nothing he could think could compare with the fantastic reality.
AS HE raced his thick, tank-like suit along the corridor, Hewitt consciously braced himself, consciously accepted the abnormality of his environment. He grew more observant, more thoughtful—and more tense.
He came to the place where the corridor divided. He slowed. One side, he knew, curved up a spiral ramp to the living quarters of the crew. The other went down to the engine room, one of the storerooms and the apartments of the scientists.
There were no stairways or elevators in the Hope of Man. It had been intended that people should use their muscles for every necessary movement.
Hewitt headed down. As he reached the third floor down, and glanced along that corridor, he saw that a man was standing at one of the entrances to the lower storeroom.
His posture was as unchanging as Captain Grayson’s. His eyes were wide and staring: they seemed to glare straight at the motor-driven spacesuit. But neither the eyes nor the rest of the man’s body showed any reaction to Hewitt’s presence. His body, seen from the side, looked only inches in thickness. Because he was standing, he seemed even more inhuman than Grayson had been.
Hewitt recognized him as Draper, one of the scientists. Draper’s field was plant biology.
He found three more scientists standing in various postures at the entrance of the engine room. Since they did not all face in the direction of flight, they presented an amazing assortment.
One, seen from the front, was as thin as a post, a gaunt, incredible looking creature. Another was foreshortened from a side view. He simply seemed crippled. The third one resembled Captain Grayson and Draper; his narrowness was through the thickness of his body.
Inside the engine room, Armand Tellier—a mere sliver of a man as seen from the side—was bending over a section of the instrument board. He stared down at it with unwinking eyes, and neither turned nor moved while Hewitt watched.
Dissatisfied, feeling he was missing something in this silent drama, Hewitt gave his attention to the engines. His first glance at the line of meters shocked him.
The pile was as hot as a hundred hells. The transformer needle was abnormally steady, for the colossal load it was bearing. The drive was carrying an energy flow of ninety out of a possible hundred.
The resistance to acceleration must be tremendous, for the accelerometer needle registered zero. As he glanced at the speedometer, Hewitt’s mind flashed back to what Captain Grayson had been writing in his logbook: “. . . 177,000 miles per second . . .”
That was what the speedometer showed.
For the second time, Hewitt thought, “But surely that doesn’t mean it still—”
His mind refused to hold the thought.
Nevertheless, by the time he retreated from the engine room, his brain was beginning to relax. And part of the greater picture was forming there.
It would have to be discussed, thought about, clarified. Tremendously stimulated by the possibilities, but depressed by the death that was all around him, he started on what he intended to be a swift and routine round of the rest of the ship.
Mrs. Tellier sat in a chair with a child on her knee, a fixed smile on her face. Two scientists’ wives had been caught by immobility as they were taking dishes from the automatic dish-washing machine. They made an oddly life-like domestic tableau. The other children were in a large play-pen, with several women sitting in chairs nearby, apparently watching them. All were distorted.
Upstairs, in the crew’s quarters, Hewitt found not only the crewmen and their wives, but Warwick, the soldier of fortune, Marie, his blonde wife, and Juanita Lord, the child bride of Captain Grayson. The girl looked older, and she had a sullen expression on her immobile face. Warwick had a gun in his hand, which he had evidently been cleaning. The shells were spilled out on his lap.
Despite the hideous distorting effect from the light and the one-third contraction, the postures of those present were conventional. That puzzled Hewitt anew.
He had been trying to hold away from his consciousness the extent of the disaster that was here. Just for a moment it penetrated, in spite of himself. Just for an instant it hurt like fury. He had a brief but unnerving sense of guilt. From the corner of one eye, he saw a group of children. All were sitting or standing in the various positions that must have been the results of their final movements.
Hastily, not looking directly at the youngsters, Hewitt guided his machine out into the corridor. He was heading along it when he thought, One of those babies was in an extremely odd position.
He slowed down, disturbed. He oughtn’t to have been so squeamish. He should have taken a good look at the scene.
The only thing is, he told himself, I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t stop for a second look.
At the head of the ramp, he hesitated. He couldn’t go back without checking. Very pointed questions might be asked him. He’d better have the answers.
CHAPTER THREE
Zone of Danger
BACK he went to the crew’s quarters. The scene was unchanged. There were six children in one corner. They were all between two and three years old, he judged.
That was important because it gave some idea of how much time had actually gone by aboard the ship. At most, three and a half years. And yet the Hope of Man had been gone for six!
Unquestionably this ship had undergone some of the contraction effects predicted by the Lorentz-Fitzgerald theory. Even time had been telescoped.
It was a point Hewitt noted only in passing. Something else, something far more important—or so it seemed—absorbed him. Four of the children were sitting on the floor amid a wilderness of toys. One child stood flat-footed, in an awkward position. The sixth had been caught in the act of getting to his feet.
Hewitt stared at the boy in utter fascination. The sense of urgency in him was tremendous. It was time he was out of here.
But the youngster, in getting up, had got himself into an unusual position. He was balanced on the tip of one toe and the outspread fingers of one chubby hand. There he had frozen.
Almost blankly, Hewitt realized the truth. He had not, he saw, let his mind carry him far enough. The difference in air pressure, the immense tensile strength of the metal—these things had been but part of a greater whole.
There was a time difference also. These people lived one second while he lived nine hundred and seventy-three seconds. From their point of view, he was making his entire inspection of their ship in less than one second of their time.
He thought, They’re alive! But they’re living so slowly compared to me that, even if I had a chance to listen to their heartbeats, I wouldn’t hear anything.
The question was, how could contact be established? And, when it was, what good would it do?
The uncertainty was still in his mind as he raced back to the airlock, and the Molly D.
DURING Hewitt’s absence from the salvage vessel, a great man had come aboard. He listened with the others to Hewitt’s account, and then remained silent and thoughtful through most of the discussion that followed. His presence had a subduing effect on the younger government scientists aboard. No one had very much to say. The attitude seemed to be, “You stick your neck out first!”
As a result, the conversation remained “close to the ground.” Phrases like “a natural explanation” abounded. When he had listened to all he could stand, Hewitt said impatiently, “After all, these things have happened. What do we mean by natural?”
He was about to say more, when the great man cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since he had been introduced. “Gentlemen, I should like to try to clear away the debris that has accumulated at the beginning of this obstacle course.”
He turned to Hewitt. “I want to congratulate you, Mr. Hewitt. For the first time in history, the mythical observer—that mathematical oddity—has come to life. You have seen phenomena that, till now, have never been more than a set of equations.”
Without any further preliminary, he launched into an explanation for what had happened that was similar to what Hewitt had written—and destroyed—in jail. It differed in that he also offered a theory to account for the fact that the drive of the Hope of Man was nearly full on, and that apparently the ship was traveling at very near the speed of light in its own zone of existence, as he put it, “in a sort of parallel time to now, this minute, this second!”
Further knowledge might, among other things, account for one fact. How had this zone succeeded in bringing the Hope of Man back to Earth when the ship had accelerated in the opposite direction?
He broke off. “However, the time has come for a practical solution. I offer the following.”
Duplicates of a carefully-written letter must be placed in the hands of Armand Tellier and Captain Grayson. The circumstances would be described, and the men would be urged to cut oft both the drive and the robot pilot. If this were not done within a certain time—taking into account the difference in time rate—it would be assumed that the letter had been misunderstood. At that point Hewitt would go aboard, shut off the robot and reverse the drive.
As soon as the Hope of Man had slowed to a point below the critical speed, personal contact could be established. Long before that, of course, the truth of the account in the letters would have been established to the satisfaction of everyone aboard.
Hewitt frowned over the suggestions. He could think of no reason why they shouldn’t work. And yet, having been aboard that foreshortened, eerie ship, with its pile operating to the very limit of safety, its lopsided passengers moveless as in death, he had a feeling that some factor was being neglected.
He said slowly, “I’ll have to take along food and water, if I have to do the shutting off. This time difference could become very involved.”
It was also decided that the Molly D would cast off as soon as the letters were delivered. If it was later necessary to put him aboard again, it would connect up just long enough to do so, then once more it would pull clear, and stand by.
HEWITT helped prepare the letter. Then once more he was put into the mobile spacesuit. And again he crossed the threshold of the Hope of Man. As he moved through the outer doorway, something caught at his heart. He swayed in momentary nausea.
The feeling passed as quickly as it had come. He noted the reactions, and then without further incident he delivered one copy of the letter to Grayson and another to Tellier. He was greatly stimulated to notice that Grayson had finished writing the word “happened” during his absence. He could see no change, however, in the position of Tellier.
He returned to the Molly D., but did not wait for them to cast off. He headed for Earth, and his doctor. After a complete examination, he was pronounced, as the doctor phrased it, “One hundred per cent physically fit.”
Relieved that his brief nausea had had no pathological basis, Hewitt set about clearing up his affairs. It had been decided to give those aboard the Hope of Man fifteen minutes (their time) to react to the letters. That would be about ten days, normal time.
Among other things, Hewitt, after some hesitation, called up Joan, and asked her if he could call on her. She refused.
“It wouldn’t be fair to the children,” she said. “They were just beginning to live down the first publicity, and now there it is again.”
Hewitt knew what she meant. Other young people were cruel. They taunted. They asked such questions as, “When is your old man going to fall into the sun?”
It was all very silly, but it was devastating too.
Yet he stayed on the phone. There was a purpose on his mind. Life without her had been bitter and empty. It was a lonely world for a man with his obsession.
Hesitantly, dreading her reaction, he explained what was in his heart. He would have three more spacesuits constructed.
“We can all go aboard together,” he said urgently. “The whole thing is really very simple. As soon as we’re on, I’ll reverse the engines. It won’t take long before we’re at a one-to-one relationship with those aboard. It’s a matter of reducing speed.”
The silence at the other end told him at least a part of what she was thinking. He forced himself to go on:
“Joan, you can’t just say no. You’ve got to give the children their chance to escape the holocaust. Beside that, a little ridicule is nothing. And, anyway, once we’re on the way to Centaurus, we don’t have to worry about what people think. Try to look on it as a colonizing venture—”
There was a click in his ear.
“Joan!” He spoke sharply.
There was no answer. With trembling fingers, he dialed her number again. The phone at the other end rang and rang. Convinced, finally, that she wouldn’t even speak to him, he hung up. What hurt particularly was that she didn’t seem to have realized that this was their good-by. They would never see each other again.
He could have justified her action, but he made no attempt to do so.
He put his affairs in order, as a man might who expected to die. Promptly on the tenth day, he reported back to the Molly D., which was again attached to the larger vessel.
He had few doubts. With his armored suit, and his time-ratio advantage, he could dominate the situation aboard until he had reduced the ship’s speed to the point where he and it were at unity.
First of all, he would lock up the ship’s arsenal. He intended to search every person aboard. Individuals like Warwick, who played with weapons in their spare time, would receive special attention.
I’m not, Hewitt told himself, taking the slightest chance. These people are going to Centaurus whether they like it or not.
As he crossed into the airlock of the Hope of Man, a knife-like spasm of pain stabbed through his heart. It was so sharp, so agonizing, he almost fainted with nausea.
The shock staggered him, but—as it had the first time—the feeling passed.
Shaken, Hewitt crossed the inner threshold, and closed and locked the door that looked so normal from the outside, and so lopsided from the inside.
He found himself in the dim, gray-black world of the ship’s interior.
As he turned to head along that unnaturally narrow corridor, something grabbed his body from behind and squeezed it mercilessly. The sensation of being caught by a giant hand was so realistic that he tried to turn back toward the door.
The great hand began to slip. He had the feeling then of being squirted from a space that was too small for him into something—vast.
That was the last thing he remembered before blackness closed over him.
HE MUST have been unconscious only a few moments. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the suit was still in the process of turning toward the door.
In a moment it would smash against the hard metal of the lock.
