The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 343
"Yes," said Mercer. He added: "All the passengers made it to the pods."
"Good. I spent a few minutes listening to your rollcall. You seem to be handling things fairly well—one reason we are minding our own business and letting you do the same. We have had to spend some time on stabilizing our segments and repositioning them so that our directional antennas will bear—mine on Eurydice Control, Neilson's on the ship in the hope of getting a few minutes' warning before she blows. MacArdle's antenna is on the radio beacon we dropped, which will be on low emission until the time comes for us to burn for rendezvous. I think you were unnecessarily tough on young Mathewson."
Mercer double-checked to make sure that the passengers were not receiving the conversation, but he did not reply.
"I want your reaction, Mercer."
"Sorry, I thought you were simply giving your opinion," said Mercer, not caring if he sounded insubordinate or merely angry. "Maybe I was wrong to handle it that way because I don't know very much about the boy or his mother. But I do know a little. The woman is escaping—" his tone became clinical—"whether from an event or a person I don't at the moment know. I do know that the boy's father was far gone on PCs, so perhaps he got himself killed or he suicided during a change party—or maybe he survived physically but with the original personality lost along with the ability to mentate. The woman, I would say, has never been on PCs—she was and is too worried and tense and—well—normal. The boy shows some signs of emotional disturbance, but is otherwise also normal. He has a uniform and wants to play spaceman."
"I noticed that."
"The trouble is," Mercer continued, "I have been playing the game with him by treating him—and talking to him—as if he were a junior ship's officer. Part of the game was that I did not act toward him as I acted toward the other passengers—they were asked to do things, he was told. You realize the position I'm in? If I change suddenly from being a superior officer, even a pretend superior officer, to a sentimental softie who tells him that he is a good boy and not to cry, there could be trouble. His father must have subjected him to the same kind of major personality change several times a week and the kid did not like it. The way I see it, rather than be nice sometimes and nasty at others it is better to be consistently nasty."
"I've found that myself."
"The next step," Mercer went on, "will be to help him stabilize his pod and not sound too much like a worried father while I'm doing it."
"Very well. It's your problem."
"And his," said Mercer.
Chapter Twelve
"QUIET, EVERYONE. Pod Fourteen, come in, please." Mercer's voice.
Kirk, in Pod Three, hung close against the interior face of the services module, knees drawn up and elbows tight against his chest as he gripped one of the soft plastic handles projecting from it. His eyes were tightly shut despite the anti-glare goggles he was wearing. His small, hairless head, thick neck, sloping shoulders and wide waist gave him the visual aspect, from the back, of an enormous, lumpy pear.
Close beside him Stone was holding on with one hand while the other covered his eyes. "If you're not using the damn things," he whispered, "give them to me."
At the other end of Pod Three Mrs. Mathewson also had a hand over her eyes. The other one was gripping a screen attachment point while her head was inclined toward the speaker grill. She wanted to hear what Mercer wanted to say to Bobby in Pod Fourteen. She could not, of course, hear her son.
"Please," she whispered.
"Sorry," said Stone in an even quieter whisper. "But there are people who take no notice unless you shout at the top of your voice." He tapped Kirk on the shoulder and pointed at the goggles.
Kirk let go of the plastic grip with one hand. Without warning he swung it back, hitting Stone in the chest with his closed fist and forearm and sending him spinning slowly across the pod. Then he pulled off the goggles and threw them at Stone.
Stone blundered into Mrs. Mathewson's legs and instinctively grabbed them to steady himself, with the result that they both swung into the flexible wall of the pod which gave alarmingly with their weight before bouncing them away again. For a few seconds the whole pod grew bulges and indentations until it reached dynamic equilibrium again and the spinning sun took up an even more complex motion.
Squinting against the intermittent glare, Stone fished the goggles out of the air and put them on. He looked at Kirk's back for a long time, but the tinted eyepiece made it impossible to read his expression.
Pod Fourteen had evidently answered—Mercer's voice came again over the speaker, replying to whatever Bobby Mathewson had said.
"I know it isn't. But first you must put on the goggles. You will find them clipped to the underside of the lid with a red cross on it. While you are finding them and putting them on I will explain why this is not like the demonstration film. That film showed a simple abandon-ship sequence that allowed enough time for the pods to be manned and all ship-to-pod connections severed by the ship's officers before launching. The connection that has caused our trouble was a thin cable that carried ship's power to a pod, so that it could be tested or used for survival drills without wasting its own internal power. This cable should have been cut by a remote-controlled knife, which is also, for manual operation, fitted to a handle that projects through the pod hatch cover. But there was too much steam in the passenger compartment and not enough time for me to go around pulling handles, and the circuits to the remote-controlled actuators were dead.
"When the pods were launched the cable tugged the pods sideways as they left and gave some of them a twist as well. Normally the pods and cabin segments would not spin at all as they came free, but you have to remember that there is no real difference between starting a spin to change the attitude of your vehicle and stopping it. Just as long as you
"No, Mathewson, not that kind of knife, but it cuts just as well. Are you ready?"
"It's too complicated," said Mrs. Mathewson.
"He's a smart boy," Stone whispered.
"Right." The whispers in Pod Three had evidently reached Mercer. "The first thing to do is to lie as flat as you can against the pod skin, the transparent section, and hold on to the molded finger grips in the plastic. Got that? Then move around until the sun seems to be coming from the top of your head, passing in front of you and then moving under your feet. Take your time, Mathewson. There's no hurry about this."
Stone stared at the sun—it was whipping over and around the pod so quickly that he could only guess at its direction of travel. He opened his mouth to speak to Mrs. Mathewson, then remembered that they were supposed to keep the frequency clear for the boy and shut it again.
Others, apparently, had forgotten.
"Quiet, everyone," Mercer said. "I lost some of that, Mathewson. Say again, please, slow and easy."
"Don't cry, Bobby," said Mrs. Mathewson softly. "Please don't cry."
"Going too fast, you say? I see. There is a trick you can try that should beat that one. Get flat against the plastic again, look outside and blink as fast as you can. That will make the sun seem to stop or at least go past in short streaks that will let you know the direction it is traveling in. Ready? Now—"
"It works, by God," breathed Stone.
"When you know the direction, get the sun to come from above your head and go down past your face and under your feet. Keep it moving like that as you start to crawl forward. When you come to the lock section or the services panel—or when you are crawling over plastic that is not transparent—try to keep your line of movement straight by looking ahead to the next transparent section to see where the sun is. Got that? Then off you go."
Stone began to crawl, trying to keep the incandescent band of the sun vertically in front of him and his body flat against the plastic. He was not very successful in doing either.
"I know. But don't try to rush it, Mathewson. Try for a steady even movement and don't worry if the sun appears to drift sideways—when you have checked the tumbling motion of your vehicle it will be easy for you to turn at right angles and check the sideways movement. But it will be a slow job because this is a solo mission for you. If you had more people on board they could cooperate, space themselves at intervals around the inside of the pod and crawl in the same direction—or hold on to each other with their feet against the plastic and walk sideways.
"But that is their problem, Mathewson. Yours is that your body mass is small in relation to the mass of the vehicle you are controlling, so you are going to have to put in some long-distance crawling.
Stone's erratic crawl took him within a few inches of Kirk. As he moved past he asked quietly, "Are you going to help me?"
"I don't know what he's talking about," said Kirk angrily.
"He's explaining," said Stone, "so a ten-year-old would understand it."
"Sorry, Mathewson, your vehicle does not have attitude jets—we don't want to make the job too easy, do we? But you do have some power—two short-duration thrusters that must be used only to make rendezvous with the recovery ship."
As Stone crawled past Mrs. Mathewson he whispered. "Don't worry, he'll be all right. But I could use some help and it might take your mind off the boy for a while if you—"
"Stop talking about me, Stone," said Kirk suddenly, "or I'll smash you."
"Quiet! Please keep this frequency clear for Pod Fourteen. That's fine, Mathewson—do another circuit on the same line. You won't notice much change until you've been around twenty or thirty times. If you have any problems call me. Listening out."
ON POD Three the stabilization exercise was not going well. Stone found it difficult enough to keep his feet and legs from drifting away from the plastic skin, but Mrs. Mathewson was in a worse predicament—she had to cover her eyes with one hand, which made crawling virtually impossible, or use both hands and keep her eyes tightly shut, which meant that she could not see where she was going.
Stone said, "Suppose we stand at opposite sides of the pod with our heads together in the center and facing each other. If we grip each other's arms and begin walking forward, I can guide us while you keep your eyes shut. Would you like to try it for a while?"
But the strain of gripping each other's arms was considerable even if they did not weigh anything and their combined length was much greater than the internal diameter of the pod so that the plastic material bulged outward alarmingly under their feet. But they were beginning to get the hang of it when Stone spoke again.
"I never could stand roundabouts as a kid, you know. Or swings. Especially the instant when you stop swinging up and haven't yet started to come down. This—this bothers me. Some time I'll tell you all about my childish fears, but right now I'm busy. Right foot, Mrs. Mathewson. Now the left, slowly. Right. Left—"
On Pod Five the situation was much less orderly, with four slowly struggling bodies and six plastic screens filling the living space. Just after the pod had been released from the ship the screens had been kicked from their fastenings, and there had been too much shouting and crying since then for anyone to think about replacing them. But Mercer's voice on the radio and the Mathewson boy's trouble had brought silence at least.
"Let's get ourselves organized," whispered Eglin. "We'll start by clearing these crazy mobiles—throw them aft at me and I'll refold them. Then try to stand with your heads together in the center and your feet at equal intervals around the skin like the man said. I'll wear the goggles and keep you on the right line while you're walking sideways."
Later as the women were rotating like a human three-bladed propeller, Eglin realized that he could keep them on the right line by watching how the sunlight struck each of them as it whirled around. The effect was visually dramatic, he thought, and wished that he had had the time to grab his camera.
"Don't rush it, Mathewson. Move slowly and steadily—try to imagine that you are still and that you are pulling the pod around underneath you. Or imagine that you are on the inside of a treadmill. Do you know what a treadmill is?"
Pod Four was already motionless. The opaque, silvered half of its envelope was aimed directly at the sun so that the interior was in darkness and the stars shone cold and clear through the transparent section. It was the first pod to be stabilized and the reason was that Mr. Corrie was an astrophysicist. He had been starting to check his pod's spin before Mercer had left the control room on Eurydice.
"I can see Three and Five," he whispered. "Not very clearly and in a few hours they will be too far away to see at all. I wish I knew which was which, but I don't know our direction of travel or whether we are right side up with respect to—But wait. All the pods are points on the circumference of an expanding circle, so that an imaginary line drawn between Three and Five must pass behind us, so that would give our direction of travel. But I still can't tell whether we're upside down or not—"
"Not so loud, George."
"Sorry, I'd forgotten the boy."
"Do you realize, George," whispered Mrs. Corrie, whose aptitudes had always lain in the softer sciences, "that we've never been really alone together for the past eighteen years?"
"Take another rest, Mathewson. And yes, drink as much and as often as you feel like it. Water will never be a problem, but you don't want to let yourself get overtired or overheated—you can't just open a window, you know. Your life-support system will, in normal conditions, handle the heat generated by three adult bodies at rest, but I may have been working you too hard. While you're resting read the instructions on the food dispenser and the other essential services. If there is anything you don't understand, ask me."
In Pod Two Mrs. Wallace was rigging the plastic screens designed to give a measure of privacy to one of the essential services while Simpson and McCall tried to rotate their now stable vehicle into a position that would give them enough light to work without being blinded by the sun. They were doing this by allowing sunshine to strike the inside face of the entry lock but not to shine into the section enclosed by opaque material.
"Why will water never be a problem?" she asked, then added: "Oh, I see."
A few minutes later McCall, who was studying the instruction booklet, said, "Water will never be a problem because it is recycled, but to me that implies that there will be other problems—food, air, heat dissipation. It says here that the pod food supply is of a low-residue, highly concentrated kind and that its lack of bulk will mean that we will always feel hungry, even though our bodies will have enough to keep them alive. In a three-person pod like this one the food will last just under two weeks, according to this chart. But everyone knows that it is possible to reduce food intake when one is not using energy. I don't get it. People on lifeboats at sea have survived for longer with less food and a desalination kit."
"The people on the lifeboats," Simpson said dryly, "also had unlimited quantities of fresh air."
"Quiet, please." Mercer again.
Mercer's voice erupted from the pod speakers every few minutes for the next three hours. Sometimes what he said was immediately helpful to people in difficulties—either physical or psychological—in certain pods. It was as if he had been listening to them—as indeed he had—and had slipped in the answer to their particular problem during his next conversation with the Mathewson boy. As a result, pod after pod successfully stabilized itself, and the occupants began to rig screens, familiarize themselves with their rather spartan fittings and generally make themselves as comfortable as possible.
There was no panic. Every time a survivor grew excited or even raised his or her voice to an ordinary conversational level, Mercer's voice rattled out of the speaker at all of them to be quiet and keep the channel clear for Pod Fourteen. It was extremely difficult to have a panic reaction in a whisper and knowing that someone else was in a worse fix than their own helped to keep down the fears of many.
But finally even the conversation with Pod Fourteen came to an end.
"Fine work, Mathewson. Leave rigging your screens until later. Right now you must eat and sleep. That's an order.
"You heard that, Mrs. Mathewson—he's all right. You have an astronaut in the family."
In Pod Three Mrs. Mathewson was still holding herself steady with one hand while the other covered her eyes, even though the interior was screened and shaded from the sun. She was smiling and large, weightless tears were being squeezed between her fingers.
Mercer's voice: "Your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Are there any of you—apart from myself—who have not yet been able to stabilize your pod?"
Chapter Thirteen
"PRESCOTT. What are you doing, Mercer?"
Unlike the uncluttered survival pods, the medical officer's segment had bunks, an airlock and cabinets housing various services projecting into it its mass was something like sixteen times that of the passenger vehicles. Checking its spin was not an easy matter.
"I'm trying to stabilize the segment," Mercer said, trying also to hide his breathlessness. His legs, arms and shoulders were burning with fatigue and he wondered if the only thing that was keeping his eyes from dropping shut was the absence of gravity. He added: "Another fifteen minutes should do it.'"
"Good. While you're working, listen carefully. MacArdle is the worrying kind. He has to compute return courses for each pod and crew segment—these will enable us to make rendezvous should the radio beacon fail. To make his computations he has to know where exactly, as well as who, everybody is. According to the book this exercise could be done tomorrow or the next day—even allowing for the increased scatter by that time, the pod flares should be pretty hard to miss. But these people are not trained observers and might miss seeing their neighbors' flares, which means that he would not be able to work out a course for them. He wants that data now. Can you keep young Mathewson awake?"
