The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 297
"Well now," said McCullough gravely, "you must understand first that, if anything, I would be an Eysenckian rather than a Freudian psychologist and so would never have had an occasion to use a couch professionally. But there was one period when I did some valuable research if I do say so myself, on the behavior and psychology of worms.
"There were some quite intriguing incidents," McCullough went on. "They had numbers instead of names, so there is no question of an unethical disclosure of privileged information, and they had such a low order of intelligence that to get through to them at all we had to stimulate the clitellum with a mild electric ..."
Berryman shook his head.
"Well, I did try," said McCullough, projecting a hurt expression. He went on, "As for making noises like a psychologist and pushing your mental buttons, this would be a waste of time. You are both well adjusted, self-aware, intellectually and emotionally honest and already well versed in the terminology, so that any problem which arises is immediately recognized, classified and dealt with by the person concerned. So there isn't anything for me to do even if I was supposed to do it."
For perhaps a minute there was silence, then Walters said, "I'm sorry 1 blew up at you, Doctor. If I'd been using my head at all I should have realized that anyone who turns nasty with a psychologist ends up being flattered to death."
"My point exactly!" said McCullough to Berryman. "He can even see through my subtle attempts at manipulation by flattery!"
Berryman nodded and said, "Now if only the aliens on the Ship are worms ..."
The crew of P-Two were back to normal.
But on a wider, more objective level the situation was definitely not normal. The space inside P-Two not taken up with control, communications and life-support systems, left very little room for either movement or privacy. Their total living space was a hollow cylinder seven feet in diameter and four deep, and this was further reduced by couches, control consoles and instrumentation which projected into it. Nobody could move more than a few inches without sticking an elbow or a knee in someone's face or stomach. Even the sanitary arrangements gave visual privacy only. And because their tanked oxygen was restricted, trips outside the ship were kept down to a total of two hours per week, and they just could not be alone for the length of time required by normal introverts. Instead they lay strapped loosely into their couches for an hour or so each day, pitting one muscle against another, talking or not talking, listening to incoming signals and smelling to high heaven.
In living quarters which compared unfavorably with the most unenlightened penal institutions, the crew of P-Two—and P-One, presumably—shared a not always peaceful coexistence. They tried to be polite and considerate to each other, but not too much so. The effort of guarding one's tongue continually, of always being polite, would have been so much of a strain that the emotional backlash would have led inevitably to violence.
Instead they were normally bad-tempered or sarcastic, while remaining at all times sensitive to potentially dangerous changes of atmosphere. If they sensed that the subject of their displeasure or sarcasm was becoming too strongly affected by it, the remarks were allowed to grow to ridiculous and laughable proportions. They became adepts at walking this psychological tightrope. But they were subject to severe external pressures as well.
Earth had decided to investigate the Ship with a group of trained astronauts rather than a cross-section of the best scientific brains, and all things considered it had been a sound decision. But Earth desperately wanted things to go right at the Ship. They wanted a smooth social and cultural contact and they badly wanted to find out everything they possibly could about alien science and technology. As a result, they were trying to cover themselves both ways by doing everything possible to make scientific investigators out of their astronauts.
The low signal to noise ratio during some of the lectures was merely an added irritant. The real trouble was that the lectures themselves were a constant reminder to every one of them of what lay at the end of the trip.
Any well adjusted person could face up to a problem once it was defined. But when nothing at all was known about it other than that it is in the life-and-death category and that it must somehow be solved, even the sanest personality could show signs of strain.
They were now three weeks away in time from the alien Ship ...
After one lecture so speculative that it was almost pure science fiction, Walters said, "It would be nice if we could simply hold our hands out in the universal gesture of peace. But what is the universal gesture of peace to an octopus or an intelligent vegetable?"
McCullough said, "We don't usually make gestures of peace at animals or vegetables, so their gestures toward us arc either defensive or hostile. Tortoises retreat under their shells, octopuses squirt ink at us, and plants grow thorns if they are able. Offhand I'd say that if an animal or being behaves normally when it is approached by a stranger—that is, if it doesn't take any offensive or defensive action—then it is either peacefully inclined, or suffering from an impairment of sensory equipment or brainpower. But this is an unsatisfactory answer, since it may involve a being whose normal reactions will be just as strange to us as its abnormal ones. I don't know."
"Let us suppose," Berryman said, "that the Ship is solidly packed with a vitamin-enriched sandy substance—except for certain hollowed-out areas for power and control systems—with provision made for renewing the food element and eliminating wastes. Furniture, bedding and so on would be virtually nonexistent, and control levers and—and push pads they would have to be, rather than push buttons—would be positioned all the way around and perhaps inside the mechanism they were designed to control. This being would curl itself around and insinuate itself into the machine it was operating ..."
"Not worms again," said Walters.
"I'm talking about an intelligent, wormlike life-form," the Command Pilot went on. "A worm who stayed out of its burrow long enough to look up and wonder at the stars ..."
"Oh, very poetic," said Walters.
"Shuddup you ... A worm who developed intelligence and the degree of cooperation which made possible civilization and technological progress. And now, Doctor, suppose you were confronted by a member of such a species. With your specialist knowledge of the physiology and motivations of what amounts to the aboriginal ancestors of these beings, could you arrive at an understanding with them?"
McCullough thought for a moment, then said, "An analogy would be an alien able to understand a human being from data gained while examining a baboon. I don't think it is possible. In any case the intellectual and evolutionary gap between your star-traveling worms and mine is much greater than that between a man and a baboon. This is why we are being subjected to these lectures on the mating habits of armadillos and things ..."
"Things, he says." Berryman made a face and began passing out lunch.
They nearly always ate after a discussion about the beings on the Ship, but Berryman and Walters had stopped mentioning the psychological connection between feelings of insecurity and eating. The only person to speak at all during the meal was Walters, who said thoughtfully, "You know, Doctor, there must be something you can do!"
Three days later something came up which the doctor could do. Something, apparently, which only the doctor could do.
"Morrison here. Put the doctor on, please."
"Yes, sir," said McCullough.
"Captain Hollis is having trouble. A—a skin condition, among other things. He won't sleep without heavy sedation and we're running out of that. I realize it is a lot to ask, but I'd prefer you to see him rather than prescribe from where you are. Can you come over to P-One, Doctor?"
Instinctively McCullough looked out at the stars. He could not see P-One because it was visible only on the radar screen. The last time anyone had seen it was when they were being inserted into orbit above Earth. He cleared his throat and said, "Yes, of course."
"At this distance there is an element of risk involved."
"I realize that."
"Very well. Thank you."
When the colonel had signed off, Walters gave McCullough a long, steady look, then held up three fingers. He said, "One, you're stupid. Two, you're brave. Or three, you've been brainwashed."
Chapter Four
THE PERSONNEL launcher was a light-alloy rigid pipe fifty feet long, built up in sections and slotted together without projections of any kind. It was assembled forward so as to form a continuation of the center line of the ship, and the charge which tossed its human missile into space was matched by an equal thrust directed aft so as to avoid the necessity of course corrections. On this occasion the whole ship had to be aimed at the target on a radar bearing rather than a visual sighting.
Berryman threaded the launching harness onto the first section of pipe and, while Walters completed the erection, the command pilot harnessed McCullough to the stupid contraption. It was a little odd that McCullough regarded it as a contraption now, when on Earth, after studying drawings and operating principles and seeing the demonstration films, he had considered it an ingenious and foolproof device.
The harness itself was a somewhat lopsided fabrication of thin metal tubing built around the hollow cylinder which fitted over the launching pipe, with the bulky oxygen and reaction tanks grouped on one side and the body webbing on the other. But when a man was attached to the harness with his arms drawn back and joined behind him and his legs bent vertically at the knees—there were special cuffs and stirrups fitted so that this could be done comfortably—the device began to assume a degree of symmetry. With the man added the center of thrust roughly coincided with the center of gravity so that the system had only a slight tendency to spin after launching.
"The push will send you off at just under fifteen miles per hour," Berryman told McCullough for the third or fourth time, "so if our shooting is very good and you hit P-One at this speed, it would be like running into a brick wall. You would hurt yourself, you might damage or rupture your suit and the impact could wreck the other ship ..."
"Don't joke about things like that, Berryman! Besides, you'll make him nervous."
"I wasn't joking, Colonel," the command pilot replied. Then to McCullough he went on, "I was trying to make you cautious rather than nervous, Doctor. Just remember to check your velocity with respect to the other ship in plenty of time. Start decelerating when you are about a mile off, come to a stop not too close, then edge in on your gas motor. You have a good reserve of reaction mass, your air will last for six hours, and the trip will take roughly three and a half hours since P-One is over fifty miles away ..."
"Suppose it isn't there after three and a half hours?" said McCullough. "It's a very small ship and …"
"Such morbid imaginings," said Walters severely, "ill behove a psychological gentleman ..."
"You're ready to go, Doctor," said Berryman. "Give me ten minutes to get inside and check the radar bearing again. Walters, keep clear of the launcher ..."
The launch itself was an anticlimax: just a comfortable, solid push that reminded McCullough of the first few seconds in an express elevator. Then he cleared the guide tube and was tumbling very slowly end over end.
Quickly he withdrew his arms and legs from their retaining clips and, when P-Two came into sight again, spread them out to check his spin. Walters and Berryman did not talk, although he could hear the sound of their breathing in his phones, and McCullough kept silent as well. The ship dwindled in size very slowly—it did not appear to move away from him, just to grow smaller—so that the launcher was dismantled and the tiny figures of the two pilots had re-entered the lock before distance made the finer details of the vehicle run together into a silvery triangular blur.
Just before it disappeared completely, McCullough rotated himself until he was facing his direction of travel, and began searching for an identical blur which would be Morrison's ship, even though the soonest he could hope to see it would be in another two hours.
The colonel had suggested that he sleep on the way over, leaving his receiver switched on at full volume so that Morrison could wake him when it became necessary. McCullough had refused this suggestion for two reasons. The one he gave the colonel was that he did not want to be half asleep when he closed with P-One—making contact might be a tricky enough job with him wide-awake. The other reason he did not tell anyone. It was his fear of waking up with no ship in sight, beyond all help or hope of help, alone ...
He was very much aware of the safety line coiled neatly at his waist, and of the fact that the other end of it was not attached to anything.
But that was just the beginning ...
In the weightless condition no muscular effort was required to keep arms and legs outstretched, and in that attitude spin was reduced to a minimum. But gradually the position began to feel awkward and ridiculous and, in some obscure fashion, unprotected. All around him the stars hung bright and close and beautiful, but the blackness between them went on and on forever. He told himself truthfully that he enjoyed being out here, that there was nothing to threaten him, nothing to be immediately afraid of, and nobody to see his fear even if he should show it.
He was all alone.
His rate of spin began to increase slowly, then rapidly as his outstretched arms and legs contracted until his knees were drawn up against his stomach and his arms, with the elbows tucked in as far as his suit would allow, folded tightly across his chest. But it was not until he realized that his eyes were squeezed shut that McCullough began to wonder what exactly it was that was happening to him.
He badly needed to straighten himself out, in both senses of the word.
But for some odd reason his body had passed beyond the control of his mind, just as the various layers of his mind were no longer under the control of his will. He was feeling rather than thinking. It was as if he were an enormous, dry sponge soaking up, saturating itself in loneliness—the purely subjective loneliness of being unknown and unnoticed in a crowd, the actual loneliness of being on a deserted beach where the uncaring natural phenomena of wind and wave press all around, and the awful, lost feeling of the child in the night who believes, whether rightly or wrongly, that he is unwanted and unloved. The feeling which was welling up inside McCullough was loneliness distilled, concentrated and ultimately refined. Anything in his previous experience was like comparing a slight overexposure to the sun with third-degree burns.
He crouched into himself even more tightly while the unseen stars whirled around him and the hot tears forced their way between his squeezed-together lids.
Then the awful feeling of loneliness began to withdraw, or perhaps he was withdrawing from it. The weightless spinning was oddly pleasant. There was a timeless, hypnotic quality about it. The sensation was like the moment after a tumble into deep water when it is impossible to tell if one is upside down or not, and yet the warm salt water is supporting and protecting and pressing close ...
"Say something!" shouted McCullough.
"Something," said Berryman promptly.
"Anything wrong, Doctor?"
"Not—not really, sir," said McCullough. "Whatever it was—I'm all right now."
"Good! I thought you were sleeping after all—you haven't made a sound for over two hours. We should be just about visible to you now."
McCullough straightened and slowed his spin. The stars rose majestically above the upper rim of his visor, reached zenith and then slowly set between his feet. When the sun came around he covered it with his hand so as not to be blinded, and he searched the sky. But the two bright objects he picked out were too brilliant to be P-One—they were probably Sirius and Jupiter, but he was so disoriented that he could not be sure. "I can't find you."
There must have been an edge of panic in his tone because Morrison said quickly, "You're doing fine, Doctor. Our radar shows a solid trace for P-Two. If you were off course to any large extent there would be two traces, so any divergence is minor. Look around you, carefully."
Perhaps ten minutes went by, then Morrison said, "When you were launched, our position with respect to your ship was approximately ten degrees below and fifteen degrees to the right of the central star in the right half of the W in Cassiopeia, or above and to the left of the left center star if you're turned around and it looks like an M. Use Cassiopeia as your center and search outward into Perseus, Andromeda and Cepheus—do you get the idea? The closer you are to us the greater will be our apparent displacement.
"We should be the brightest object in sight by now. You should begin deceleration in seven and one half minutes ..."
And if he did not decelerate, McCullough would go past P-One, possibly without even seeing it. But if he decelerated without seeing it and directing his thrust in the right section of sky, the chances were that he would go off at a tangent or shoot past the ship at double his present velocity. If that happened, he doubted very much whether his air or his reaction mass would be sufficient for him to find his way back.
McCullough tried not to pursue that line of thought. He tried so hard that before he realized it, his knees were drawn up and his arms pressed tightly against his chest again, and the stars were swirling around him like a jeweled blizzard. He swore suddenly and starfished again, forcing his mind to concentrate on the slowly wheeling heavens so that he could impose some sort of order out of what had become a mass of tiny, unidentifiable lights. He viewed them with his head straight and tilted to each side, or he tried to imagine them upside down, and gradually he was able to see them with the imaginary lines connecting one to the other, which gave them the shapes of Hunters and Archers and Crabs. He realized suddenly that as well as spinning head over heels he had also been turning sideways, and he was able to identify Capella, which was hanging out beyond his left hip.
Capella had picked up a very strange companion.
As quickly as possible, McCullough lined himself up on the object, placed hands and feet into the cuffs and stirrups, then said, "I have you. Standing by to decelerate."
