The Throne of Saturn, page 70
There was a slight rush of oxygen past his body for a second. Then it stopped. The tube was pressurized.
He braced his feet in the shoe-holds below the hatch, grasped a hand bar with his right hand, again cried out with the pain but swore and hung on.
With his left hand he reached out, took Jayvee’s left hand, and pulled the body toward him. It responded like a feather and he thanked God for zero G.
Gently he eased it around until the head was close to him, trying not to look at it, trying and managing to be tough and impersonal when he did. It was no time now to indulge in squeamishness or allow himself to become nauseated. It was a job that had to be done. Their lives depended upon it.
He let go of the hand bar with his wounded arm, used it gingerly to reach over and swing the hatch full open. It swung fairly easily though its resistance was enough to make him exclaim again with pain.
Then with both hands, anchoring himself only with his feet, his own weightless body swaying with the effort, he pushed Jayvee headfirst into the tube, continuing until the body was entirely inside, its head resting against the outer hatch. Then he very carefully and cautiously pulled the inner hatch halfway closed.
And then he took a deep breath, addressed his Deity with something of Connie’s bitter desperation on the Moon, and activated the automatic controls that operated the outside hatch.
He caught a split-second glimpse of sky, there was a furious rush of oxygen, he had a blurred and terrible impression of furious, almost living, outward motion in the tube.
He hit the controls for the inner hatch, pulled it toward him as hard as he could, again shouted something stern and incoherent to the Lord, found the hatch slowly and inexorably closing beneath his touch.
In what seemed eternities but were in reality no more than five seconds, it was fully sealed.
He tightened the bolts, leaned against the hatch panting for breath, made himself wait three full minutes by his watch.
Then he activated the controls to close the outer hatch and waited another three minutes.
Then he again prayed in his own exhortatory fashion and opened the inner hatch.
He saw only the empty tube, a long stain of dried blood along one side.
He closed and sealed the inner hatch, waited another two minutes, activated the controls to unseal and open the outer hatch again.
Then he paused and looked around the cabin for a long, grim moment.
“Poor son of a bitch,” he said aloud, and briefly felt a genuine regret.
It had all been so unnecessary, such a sad tangle.
Where had it begun, who had contributed to it, how could it ever have been unraveled?
He could not say.
It was a peculiarly American tangle, and therefore, perhaps, there were no real or lasting solutions, on the Moon, or on Earth, or anywhere: only temporary answers, some uneasily viable, some as empty, dreadful, and self-defeating as this.
He pulled himself to the window and looked out.
Adventurer was no more than 100 feet away. Through its window he could see Connie, somber but triumphant, raising his right hand in a thumbs-up salute.
“This is Mission Control, at 107 hours, 54 minutes Ground Elapsed Time. It’s the consensus here that our little problem with loss of signal may be a bit more serious than was at first assumed, so it’s been decided that Dr. Anderson, Dr. Cavanaugh, and Bob Hertz, together with Hank Barstow and Bert Richmond of the Astronaut Office, will hold a press conference in the auditorium in approximately thirty minutes to answer your questions about the various plans and possibilities posed by this unexpected anomaly. Meanwhile, there’s no sign of panic or tension here in the control room, everybody’s working along calmly trying to solve this problem as speedily and efficiently as possible.
“It’s the consensus here that there’s no sign or proof whatsoever that this situation is caused by anything other than a strictly mechanical failure and that once we’ve got it corrected everything will be back to normal again. Meanwhile, we assume things are going along according to flight plan up there on the Moon, which means that at this point Connie Trasker and Pete Balkis in Adventurer are about midway in their emplacement of test equipment on the Moon’s surface in a simulation of the exercise they’ll conduct when they’re actually on the surface of Mars eight months from now. And up there in Planetary Fleet One, Jazz Weickert and Jayvee Halleck are still orbiting around, essentially on stand-by until Adventurer comes up to rejoin them about one hour from now. They’re performing routine checks, keeping everything in order, getting ready for rendezvous. Everything should be proceeding just about on plan, right now, as we’ll find out for sure when we get this anomaly licked and get back in full communication with the mission.”
He felt the gentle bump as Adventurer aligned with the tube, realized suddenly that he was feeling very dizzy; thought he was going to faint; cursed and fought it as hard as he could; did faint, for a second; came to, to hear Connie pounding on the inner hatch. With sheer will power he forced himself to reach over with his left hand, activate the controls, and pull it partly open; and fainted again.
Thus, Connie found him when he crawled through into Santa Maria, his feet anchored in the shoe-holds, his body swaying gently. Connie thought, Where the hell is Jayvee? but didn’t waste time looking.
Quickly he felt Jazz’ heart, lifted his eyelids, satisfied himself it was temporary loss of consciousness and nothing more. As rapidly as he could he worked himself over to the medical supplies in the bay under the left-hand window. Slightly to the rear and less than a mile away, Man in the Moon swung offside. A helmeted face was in the window. He could not distinguish its features, but the position indicated interest.
“Christ,” he said in an exasperated voice; found spirits of ammonia, worked his way back and held them under Jazz’ nose.
Jazz gasped, choked, opened his eyes. Relief and chagrin struggled in his smile.
“Well, hello,” Connie said.
“Am I glad to see you!”
“It’s mutual. What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t see Jayvee, then. About five minutes ago.”
“No, I was getting ready to dock. What happened?”
“He left,” Jazz said with a grim humor. “After he shot me.”
Connie blinked but there was no time for extended chitchat.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m O.K. for—reasonable operations,” Jazz said carefully. “He winged me in the back and may have partially shattered my right shoulder. Mobility’s very drastically affected, I’ve got a hell of a lot of pain, and I’m beginning to feel very weak. But I’ll do what I can for you, Conn. Where is that Soviet bastard?”
“He’s right outside,” Connie said, “less than a mile to the left and a little behind. And still gaining.”
“It would be great if he were just a pal,” Jazz said with a wry smile, “but the way things have been going in the last few minutes—” He stopped abruptly, and a cold hand touched his spine. “Where’s Pete?”
“He’s—” Connie began; stopped abruptly and shook his head. A grimace of pain shot across his face. Then it was stoical and calm again, “—not here.”
“Ah, Connie,” Jazz said in a tired, unhappy voice. “God damn it. I am so sorry.”
“It’s all right. I haven’t got time to talk now but I’ll tell you all about it on the way home. And you can tell me about Jayvee. Right now—”
Jazz nodded grimly.
“Right now, we have a date with Buster out there.”
“That’s right,” Connie agreed. “One of them tried it on the surface. He had some sort of device that cut the power. It’s funny, though—” He paused thoughtfully and frowned. “Down there it cut all links to Houston, the TV, the rover, and Adventurer. But up here—”
“Oh, we’re cut. We haven’t been able to get through to Houston for more than an hour.”
“But just the downlinks. The rest of the power’s O.K., right?”
“Right.”
“That’s odd,” Connie said slowly. “I wonder … He was in a rover, too, apparently coming in from his lander, which was hidden from us, probably behind one of the craters. We were roughly 2000 feet out and I would estimate he was coming up at about the same distance on the other side when our links and TV went out. Yours must have gone at the same moment, because I tried you. But it wasn’t until we were about 500 feet away and he was about the same distance on his side that the rover died, and when I got back to Adventurer I found she was dead, too. Therefore, maybe they both had some sort of jamming equipment for communications and then they had those damned little black boxes to knock out the internal circuits.”
“Black boxes?”
“I brought one back,” Connie said. “It’s evidence,” he added confidently, not knowing then how empty his confidence would ultimately prove to be. “So that would mean—”
“That would mean that propinquity is the secret,” Jazz said, “and that when old Space Buddy gets within 1000 feet or so, we’ll go dead throughout. Connie,” he added hastily, “I’m feeling very woozy again. Have you got that—”
“Right here,” Connie said, waving the ammonia under his nose. Again, he choked and gasped and revived. “Try to stay with me, buddy,” Connie urged with some desperation. “We’ve got a job to do in the next few minutes.”
“I will,” Jazz promised, “I will. I’m doing my best.”
But he was becoming increasingly pale, and Connie was beginning to think he might have the job to do alone.
“Here,” he said quickly, “you come over to the controls. Can you manage them?”
“Depends on what you have in mind. I tell you, I’ll do my damnedest.”
“Good man,” Connie said. “I know you will.”
He stripped off his spacesuit to its shirt-sleeve essentials, stuffed the suit in the tube, and closed the hatch upon it. Then he disengaged Jazz’ feet and began to help him toward the controls. Jazz pulled himself with his left arm, Connie pushed from behind, half floating himself. They made it and got Jazz seated. Man in the Moon was closer. The head in the window was still there. It looked both impassive and alert. It did not look friendly.
As they watched, another little puff of white came from the rear thrusters.
He was now, they estimated, about 3000 feet away.
“Taking his time, isn’t he?” Jazz remarked dryly. “Playing with us. The son of a bitch.”
“Well,” Connie said grimly. “We aren’t as helpless as he thinks. Sit tight, and if he comes any closer while I’m gone, turn and ram him broadside. Don’t worry about me, I’ll grab onto something.”
“Roger,” Jazz said. He smiled, looking keyed up and not quite so pale. “As we say in dear old Texas, hurry back.”
And in a surprisingly short time Connie was back, having gone through the hatch into Nina and from there into Pinta, where he removed binoculars, sextants, extra medical supplies and Jazz and Jayvee’s two unused portable life-support systems which now would never be needed on the Moon this trip. After he had pushed them through into Nina, he returned to Pinta and turned all its auxiliary controls to OFF. Then he went back into Nina, closed the hatch, secured it; pulled himself back into Santa Maria, closed and secured the hatch; worked himself into the seat beside Jazz and took over the controls.
Man in the Moon fired his thrusters again.
His distance now was approximately 1500 feet.
“Hang tight, buddy,” Connie directed tersely, hunching forward over the controls. “Our friend is going to get a visitor he doesn’t expect.”
“Get him,” Jazz said quietly. “Let him have it.”
And again, by some fluke that Connie could never explain to himself satisfactorily later—unless it was that the Lord they had both addressed so sternly had decided to forgive them and stick around—he did.
In the configuration ordered by Houston for reasons the crew had never understood and often complained about, Santa Maria, instead of being in the center, was on the right going forward; then Nina, then Pinta. Now Pinta was to be his battering ram. In quick succession he fired the thrusters that would accomplish the plan he had devised half an hour ago when he had come up in Adventurer to find the Russian advancing on Piffy One from the other side.
His initial burn of the right rear thrusters swung the combined spacecraft sharply to the left into direct collision course with Man in the Moon. He had gambled that his opponent would fire his own thrusters once more at approximately that moment and he did. Piffy One veered toward Man in the Moon just as Man in the Moon spurted ahead to come parallel. A split- second later Connie fired all of his rear thrusters and Piffy One shot forward. A split second after that all power died. But the thrust had been sufficient. The inertial momentum continued. Piffy One met Man in the Moon at just sufficient angle so that Pinta took the brunt and gouged straight along the Russian’s right-hand oxygen tank.
There was a terrific bang, a terrible jolt inside Santa Maria. After a moment that was eternity Piffy One stabilized. But it continued to streak straight ahead, completely off-course and off-orbit.
Now they both prayed, and more respectfully; and within two seconds, it was answered. Connie’s gamble paid off: the power came back on. Instantly several things happened.
Connie hit the controls with an automatic reflex so fast it exceeded thought. He fired the forward reverse thrusters, Piffy One slowed abruptly. He fired the left rear thrusters, Piffy One swung back to the right. He fired the left thrusters, then the right, then the left, then the right, then the left, then the right. Then he paused for five seconds, studied his instruments, fired the rear thrusters. Planetary Fleet One was reasonably back on course.
Simultaneously a familiar voice filled the cabin: “—ssion Control at 108 hours, 6 minutes. We’ve still got this rather puzzling anomaly of loss of signal, but everybody here is working along calmly to—what? Hold on, everybody! Hold on! We have acquisition of signal! We have acqui—”
“Hello, One, this is Houston. We read you now, One. We have telemetry and biomed. Hello, Connie, are you there, Connie? Connie, come in, please. Hello, Connie?”
“Hello, Houston,” he said, breathing hard and trying to keep his voice steady, though not succeeding very well. “We have you, thanks. We are O.K. Stand by, and we will talk to you shortly. Over.”
“Roger, Conn,” Stu Yule said, and his voice was shaking too. “There are a lot of happy people here waiting to hear from you. Standing by. Over.”
Already approaching the horizon far to their left, venting oxygen in a great white cloud from its shattered right flank, rotating wildly, thrusters firing frantically, Man in the Moon rose steadily away to begin its long, last journey into the Sun.
“Connie,” Jazz said in a weak voice, and Connie instantly put his hand over the mike to Houston. “I think I’m going to pass out again.”
“I should think so,” Connie said with a shaky laugh. “You and me both.” He gave Jazz an encouraging smile. “Why not? It won’t hurt anything, and it’ll give you a rest for a while. Take it easy and don’t worry. I’ll wake you up in a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” Jazz said, putting his head back and closing his eyes. “I’m afraid … you’re going to have a rough … trip home with me, Conn.”
“We’ll manage,” Connie said with more certainty than he felt, as the excitement began to ebb and he suddenly realized with a grim little shiver that Jazz might be entirely right.
The thought sent his mind instantly to what Stu had just said and he said sharply,
“Houston, activate Special-1, please. Hello, Bob?—Andy: Andy, you’re getting our biomed, right?”
“Yes, Connie,” the administrator said, and Connie knew from the disturbed gravity of his voice what his next answer would be.
“And you’re only getting two of us.”
“Yes, Connie,” Andy said quietly.
“All right,” Connie said. “Listen: There is an explanation, and it is a tragic one, but it is not one we can give you now. Jazz and I are aboard. We are alone. We will not, repeat not, discuss it until we see you. Please keep biomed absolutely secret. Please impose absolute secrecy on all doctors monitoring. Please do not fail us in this. It is imperative. Do you copy?”
There was silence for a moment in Houston. Then Dr. Anderson said slowly,
“If you think—”
Connie snapped,
“I think.”
Again, there was silence.
“Very well, Connie,” Andy Anderson said; and there was a note of reservation in his voice that would have alerted Connie, had he been in a less tense and more normal state of mind, to unknown but worrisome troubles ahead. “It will be done.”
“Thanks,” Connie said, more mildly. “We’ll tell you all about it when we get there,” and added, almost defiantly, though he could not have said why, “The truth is its own defense,” not realizing in his peculiar condition of shock, unhappiness and exhilaration, that he would soon be coming home to face all the same enemies of Piffy One who had damned her when she left; and that their renewed and relentless hostility would shortly make of his aphorism one of the more naïve assumptions of the century.
“We’ll hope so,” Dr. Anderson said quietly. “I’ll turn you back to Stu on S-band now.”
“Roger,” Connie said. “Special-1, over and out.”
“Conn,” Stu said, “we want you to know how delighted and relieved everybody is here. It would do your hearts good to see all the smiling faces around this place. We were really beginning to get a little uptight about you, boy.”
“We were just a little bit uptight ourselves,” Connie said, sounding more amicable.
“What’s your plan now?” Stu asked, a tentative note in his voice. “Everything go all right on the Moon?”
“Flight plan completed,” Connie said crisply. “I think we’ll do transearth injection burn on this upcoming pass around the dark side and head on home.”
“Well, that’s good,” Stu said, a little uneasily, Connie thought. “The flight controllers will be conferring here in a couple of minutes, and then we’ll know whether we’ve got a GO or NO-GO for you on that burn—”
