The Past Through Tomorrow Page 40

  “General, put every man on the Moon out searching for Betsy!”

  Speed-of-light lag made the answer sound grudging. “Sir, do you know how big the Moon is?”

  “No matter! Betsy Barnes is there somewhere—so every man is to search until she is found. If she’s dead, your precious pilot would be better off dead, too!”

  “Sir, the Moon is almost fifteen million square miles. If I used every man I have, each would have over a thousand square miles to search. I gave Betsy my best pilot. I won’t listen to threats against him when he can’t answer back. Not from anyone, sir! I’m sick of being told what to do by people who don’t know Lunar conditions. My advice—my official advice, sir—is to let Meridian Station try. Maybe they can work a miracle.”

  The answer rapped back, “Very well, General! I’ll speak to you later. Meridian Station! Report your plans.”

  Elizabeth Barnes, “Blind Betsy,” child genius of the piano, had been making a USO tour of the Moon. She “wowed ‘em” at Tycho Base, then lifted by jeep rocket for Farside Hardbase, to entertain our lonely missilemen behind the Moon. She should have been there in an hour. Her pilot was a safety pilot; such ships shuttled unpiloted between Tycho and Farside daily.

  After lift-off her ship departed from its programming, was lost by Tycho’s radars. It was… somewhere.

  Not in space, else it would be radioing for help and its radar beacon would be seen by other ships, space stations, surface bases. It had crashed—or made emergency landing—somewhere on the vastness of Luna.

  “Meridian Space Station, Director speaking—” Lag was unnoticeable; radio bounce between Washington and the station only 22,300 miles up was only a quarter second. “We’ve patched Earthside stations to blanket the Moon with our call. Another broadcast blankets the far side— from Station Newton at the three-body stable position. Ships from Tycho are orbiting the Moon’s rim—that band around the edge which is in radio shadow from us and from the Newton. If we hear—”

  “Yes, yes! How about radar search?”

  “Sir, a rocket on the surface looks to radar like a million other features the same size. Our one chance is to get them to answer… if they can. Ultrahigh-resolution radar might spot them in months—but suits worn in those little rockets carry only six hours air. We are praying they will hear and answer.”

  “When they answer, you’ll slap a radio direction finder on them. Eh?”

  “No, sir.”

  “In God’s name, why not?”

  “Sir, a direction finder is useless for this job. It would tell us only that the signal came from the Moon—which doesn’t help.”

  “Doctor, you’re saying that you might hear Betsy—and not know where she is?”

  “We’re as blind as she is. We hope that she will be able to lead us to her… if she hears us.”

  “How?”

  “With a Laser. An intense, very tight beam of light. She’ll hear it—”

  “Hear a beam of light?”

  “Yes, sir. We are jury-rigging to scan like radar—that won’t show anything. But we are modulating it to give a carrier wave in radio frequency, then modulating that into audio frequency—and controlling that by a piano. If she hears us, we’ll tell her to listen while we scan the Moon and run the scale on the piano—”

  “All this while a little girl is dying?”

  “Mister President—shut up!”

  “Who was THAT?”

  “I’m Betsy’s father. They’ve patched me from Omaha. Please, Mr. President, keep quiet and let them work. I want my daughter back.”

  The President answered tightly, “Yes, Mr. Barnes. Go ahead, Director. Order anything you need.”

  In Station Meridian the director wiped his face. “Getting anything?”

  “No. Boss, can’t something be done about that Rio station? It’s sitting right on the frequency!”

  “We’ll drop a brick on them. Or a bomb. Joe, tell the President.”

  “I heard, Director. They’ll be silenced!”

  “Sh! Quiet! Betsy—do you hear me?” The operator looked intent, made an adjustment.

  From a speaker came a girl’s light, sweet voice: “—to hear somebody! Gee, I’m glad! Better come quick—the Major is hurt.”

  The Director jumped to the microphone. “Yes, Betsy, we’ll hurry. You’ve got to help us. Do you know where you are?”

  “Somewhere on the Moon, I guess. We bumped hard and I was going to kid him about it when the ship fell over. I got unstrapped and found Major Peters and he isn’t moving. Not dead—I don’t think so; his suit puffs out like mine and I hear something when I push my helmet against him. I just now managed to get the door open.” She added, “This can’t be Far-side; it’s supposed to be night there. I’m in sunshine, I’m sure. This suit is pretty hot.”

  “Betsy, you must stay outside. You’ve got to be where you can see us.”

  She chuckled. “That’s a good one. I see with my ears.”

  “Yes. You’ll see us, with your ears. Listen, Betsy. We’re going to scan the Moon with a beam of light. You’ll hear it as a piano note. We’ve got the Moon split into the eighty-eight piano notes. When you hear one, yell, ‘Now!’ Then tell us what note you heard. Can you do that?”

  “Of course,” she said confidently, “if the piano is in tune.”

  “It is. All right, we’re starting—”

  “Now!”

  “What note, Betsy?”

  “E flat the first octave above middle C.”

  “This note, Betsy?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  The Director called out, “Where’s that on the grid? In Mare Nubium? Tell the General!” He said to the microphone, “We’re finding you, Betsy honey! Now we scan just that part you’re on. We change setup. Want to talk to your Daddy meanwhile?”

  “Gosh! Could I?”

  “Yes indeed!”

  Twenty minutes later he cut in and heard: “—of course not, Daddy. Oh, a teensy bit scared when the ship fell. But people take care of me, always have.”

  “Betsy?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Be ready to tell us again.”

  “Now!” She added, “That’s a bullfrog G, three octaves down.”

  “This note?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Get that on the grid and tell the General to get his ships up! That cuts it to a square ten miles on a side! Now, Betsy—we know almost where you are. We are going to focus still closer. Want to go inside and cool off?”

  “I’m not too hot. Just sweaty.”

  Forty minutes later the General’s voice rang out: “They’ve spotted the ship! They see her waving!”

  Ordeal in Space

  MAYBE WE SHOULD never have ventured out into space. Our race has but two basic, innate fears; noise and the fear of falling. Those terrible heights—Why should any man in his right mind let himself be placed where he could fall… and fall… and fall— But all spacemen are crazy. Everybody knows that.

  The medicos had been very kind, he supposed. “You’re lucky. You want to remember that, old fellow. You’re still young and your retired pay relieves you of all worry about your future. You’ve got both arms and legs and are in fine shape.”

  “Fine shape!” His voice was unintentionally contemptuous.

  “No, I mean it,” the chief psychiatrist had persisted gently. “The little quirk you have does you no harm at all—except that you can’t go out into space again. I can’t honestly call acrophobia a neurosis; fear of falling is normal and sane. You’ve just got it a little more strongly than most—but that is not abnormal, in view of what you have been through.”

  The reminder set him to shaking again. He closed his eyes and saw the Stars wheeling below him again. He was falling… falling endlessly. The psychiatrist’s voice came through to him and pulled him back. “Steady, old man! Look around you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not at all. Now tell me, what do you plan to do?”
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  “I don’t know. Get a job, I suppose.”

  “The Company will give you a job, you know.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to hang around a spaceport.” Wear a little button in his shirt to show that he was once a man, be addressed by a courtesy title of captain, claim the privileges of the pilots’ lounge on the basis of what he used to be, hear the shop talk die down whenever he approached a group, wonder what they were saying behind his back—no, thank you!

  “I think you’re wise. Best to make a clean break, for a while at least, until you are feeling better.”

  “You think I’ll get over it?”

  The psychiatrist pursed his lips. “Possible. It’s functional, you know. No trauma.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I didn’t say that. I honestly don’t know. We still know very little about what makes a man tick.”

  “I see. Well, I might as well be leaving.”

  The psychiatrist stood up and shoved out his hand. “Holler if you want anything. And come back to see us in any case.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re going to be all right. I know it.”

  But the psychiatrist shook his head as his patient walked out. The man did not walk like a spaceman; the easy, animal self-confidence was gone.

  Only a small part of Great New York was roofed over in those days; he stayed underground until he was in that section, then sought out a passageway lined with bachelor rooms. He stuck a coin in the slot of the first one which displayed a lighted “vacant” sign, chucked his jump bag inside, and left. The monitor at the intersection gave him the address of the nearest placement office. He went there, seated himself at an interview desk, stamped in his finger prints, and started filling out forms. It gave him a curious back-to-the-beginning feeling; he had not looked for a job since pre-cadet days.

  He left filling in his name to the last and hesitated even then. He had had more than his bellyful of publicity; he did not want to be recognized; he certainly did not want to be throbbed over—and most of all he did not want anyone telling him he was a hero. Presently he printed in the name “William Saunders” and dropped the forms in the slot.

  He was well into his third cigarette and getting ready to strike another when the screen in front of him at last lighted up. He found himself staring at a nice-looking brunette. “Mr. Saunders,” the image said, “will you come inside, please? Door seventeen.”

  The brunette in person was there to offer him a seat and a cigarette. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Saunders. I’m Miss Joyce. I’d like to talk with you about your application.”

  He settled himself and waited, without speaking.

  When she saw that he did not intend to speak, she added, “Now take this name ‘William Saunders’ which you have given us—we know who you are, of course, from your prints.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Of course I know what everybody knows about you, but your action in calling yourself ‘William Saunders’, Mr.—”

  “Saunders.”

  “—Mr. Saunders, caused me to query the files.” She held up a microfilm spool, turned so that he might read his own name on it. “I know quite a lot about you now—more than the public knows and more than you saw fit to put into your application. It’s a good record, Mr. Saunders.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I can’t use it in placing you in a job. I can’t even refer to it if you insist on designating yourself as ‘Saunders.’”

  “The name is Saunders.” His voice was flat, rather than emphatic.

  “Don’t be hasty, Mr. Saunders. There are many positions in which the factor of prestige can be used quite legitimately to obtain for a client a much higher beginning rate of pay than—”

  “I’m not interested.”

  She looked at him and decided not to insist. “As you wish. If you will go to reception room B, you can start your classification and skill tests.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you should change your mind later, Mr. Saunders, we will be glad to reopen the case. Through that door, please.”

  Three days later found him at work for a small firm specializing in custom-built communication systems. His job was calibrating electronic equipment. It was soothing work, demanding enough to occupy his mind, yet easy for a man of his training and experience. At the end of his three months probation he was promoted out of the helper category.

  He was building himself a well-insulated rut, working, sleeping, eating, spending an occasional evening at the public library or working out at the YMCA—and never, under any circumstances, going out under the open sky nor up to any height, not even a theater balcony.

  He tried to keep his past life shut out of his mind, but his memory of it was still fresh; he would find himself day-dreaming—the star-sharp, frozen sky of Mars, or the roaring night life of Venusburg. He would see again the swollen, ruddy bulk of Jupiter hanging over the port on Ganymede, its oblate bloated shape impossibly huge and crowding the sky.

  Or he might, for a time, feel again the sweet quiet of the long watches on the lonely reaches between the planets. But such reveries were dangerous; they cut close to the edge of his new peace of mind. It was easy to slide over and find himself clinging for life to his last handhold on the steel sides of the Valkyrie, fingers numb and failing, and nothing below him but the bottomless well of space.

  Then he would come back to Earth, shaking uncontrollably and gripping his chair or the workbench.

  The first time it had happened at work he had found one of his bench-mates, Joe Tully, staring at him curiously. “What’s the trouble, Bill?” he had asked. “Hangover?”

  “Nothing,” he had managed to say. “Just a chill.”

  “You better take a pill. Come on—let’s go to lunch.”

  Tully led the way to the elevator; they crowded in. Most of the employees—even the women—preferred to go down via the drop chute, but Tully always used the elevator. “Saunders”, of course, never used the drop chute; this had eased them into the habit of lunching together. He knew that the chute was safe, that, even if the power should fail, safety nets would snap across at each floor level—but he could not force himself to step off the edge.

  Tully said publicly that a drop-chute landing hurt his arches, but he confided privately to Saunders that he did not trust automatic machinery. Saunders nodded understandingly but said nothing. It warmed him toward Tully. He began feeling friendly and not on the defensive with another human being for the first time since the start of his new life. He began to want to tell Tully the truth about himself. If he could be sure that Joe would not insist on treating him as a hero—not that he really objected to the role of hero. As a kid, hanging around spaceports, trying to wangle chances to go inside the ships, cutting classes to watch take-offs, he had dreamed of being a “hero” someday, a hero of the spaceways, returning in triumph from some incredible and dangerous piece of exploration. But he was troubled by the fact that he still had the same picture of what a hero should look like and how he should behave; it did not include shying away from open windows, being fearful of walking across an open square, and growing too upset to speak at the mere thought of boundless depths of space.

  Tully invited him home for dinner. He wanted to go, but fended off the invitation while he inquired where Tully lived. The Shelton Homes, Tully told him, naming one of those great, boxlike warrens that used to disfigure the Jersey flats. “It’s a long way to come back,” Saunders said doubtfully, while turning over in his mind ways to get there without exposing himself to the things he feared.

  “You won’t have to come back,” Tully assured him. “We’ve got a spare room. Come on. My old lady does her own cooking—that’s why I keep her.”

  “Well, all right,” he conceded. “Thanks, Joe.” The La Guardia Tube would take him within a quarter of a mile; if he could not find a covered way he would take a ground cab and close the shades.

  Tully met
him in the hall and apologized in a whisper. “Meant to have a young lady for you, Bill. Instead we’ve got my brother-in-law. He’s a louse. Sorry.”

  “Forget it, Joe. I’m glad to be here.” He was indeed. The discovery that Bill’s flat was on the thirty-fifth floor had dismayed him at first, but he was delighted to find that he had no feeling of height. The lights were on, the windows occulted, the floor under him was rock solid; he felt warm and safe. Mrs. Tully turned out in fact to be a good cook, to his surprise—he had the bachelor’s usual distrust of amateur cooking. He let himself go to the pleasure of feeling at home and safe and wanted; he managed not even to hear most of the aggressive and opinionated remarks of Joe’s in-law.

  After dinner he relaxed in an easy chair, glass of beer in hand, and watched the video screen. It was a musical comedy; he laughed more heartily than he had in months. Presently the comedy gave way to a religious program, the National Cathedral Choir; he let it be, listening with one ear and giving some attention to the conversation with the other.

  The choir was more than half way through Prayer for Travelers before he became fully aware of what they were singing:

  “—hear us when we pray to Thee

  For those in peril on the sea.

  “Almighty Ruler of the all

  Whose power extends to great and small,

  Who guides the stars with steadfast law,

  Whose least creation fills with awe;

  Oh, grant Thy mercy and Thy grace

  To those who venture into space.”

  He wanted to switch it off, but he had to hear it out, he could not stop listening to it, though it hurt him in his heart with the unbearable homesickness of the hopelessly exiled. Even as a cadet this one hymn could fill his eyes with tears; now he kept his face turned away from the others to try to hide from them the drops wetting his cheeks.

  When the choir’s “amen” let him do so he switched quickly to some other—any other—program and remained bent over the instrument, pretending to fiddle with it, while he composed his features. Then he turned back to the company, outwardly serene, though it seemed to him that anyone could see the hard, aching knot in his middle.