OPERATION: OUTER SPACE
by
MURRAY LEINSTER
CHAPTER ONE
Jed Cochrane tried to be cynical as the helicab hummed softly throughthe night over the city. The cab flew at two thousand feet, wherelighted buildings seemed to soar toward it from the canyons which werestreets. There were lights and people everywhere, and Cochranesardonically reminded himself that he was no better than anybody else,only he'd been trying to keep from realizing it. He looked down at thetrees and shrubbery on the roof-tops, and at a dance that was going onatop one of the tallest buildings. All roofs were recreation-spacesnowadays. They were the only spaces available. When you looked down at acity like this, you had cynical thoughts. Fourteen million people inthis city. Ten million in that. Eight in another and ten in anotherstill, and twelve million in yet another ... Big cities. Swarmingmillions of people, all desperately anxious--so Cochrane realizedbitterly--all desperately anxious about their jobs and keeping them.
"Even as me and I," said Cochrane harshly to himself. "Sure! I'm shakingin my shoes right along with the rest of them!"
But it hurt to realize that he'd been kidding himself. He'd thought hewas important. Important, at least, to the advertising firm of Kursten,Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe. But right now he was on the way--like acommon legman--to take the moon-rocket to Lunar City, and he'd beeninformed of it just thirty minutes ago. Then he'd been told casually toget to the rocket-port right away. His secretary and two technical menand a writer were taking the same rocket. He'd get his instructions fromDr. William Holden on the way.
A part of his mind said indignantly, "_Wait till I get Hopkins on thephone! It was a mixup! He wouldn't send me off anywhere with theDikkipatti Hour depending on me! He's not that crazy!_" But he was onhis way to the space-port, regardless. He'd raged when the messagereached him. He'd insisted that he had to talk to Hopkins in personbefore he obeyed any such instructions. But he was on his way to thespace-port. He was riding in a helicab, and he was making adjustments inhis own mind to the humiliation he unconsciously foresaw. There werereally three levels of thought in his mind. One had adopted a defensivecynicism, and one desperately insisted that he couldn't be asunimportant as his instructions implied, and the third watched the othertwo as the helicab flew with cushioned booming noises over the darkcanyons of the city and the innumerable lonely lights of the rooftops.
There was a thin roaring sound, high aloft. Cochrane jerked his headback. The stars filled all the firmament, but he knew what to look for.He stared upward.
One of the stars grew brighter. He didn't know when he first picked itout, but he knew when he'd found it. He fixed his eyes on it. It was avery white star, and for a space of minutes it seemed in no wisedifferent from its fellows. But it grew brighter. Presently it was verybright. It was brighter than Sirius. In seconds more it was brighterthan Venus. It increased more and more rapidly in its brilliance. Itbecame the brightest object in all the heavens except the crescent moon,and the cold intensity of its light was greater than any part of that.Then Cochrane could see that this star was not quite round. He coulddetect the quarter-mile-long flame of the rocket-blast.
It came down with a rush. He saw the vertical, stabbing pencil of lightplunge earthward. It slowed remarkably as it plunged, with all theflying aircraft above the city harshly lighted by its glare. Thespace-port itself showed clearly. Cochrane saw the buildings, and theother moon-rockets waiting to take off in half an hour or less.
The white flame hit the ground and splashed. It spread out in a wideflat disk of intolerable brightness. The sleek hull of the ship whichstill rode the flame down glinted vividly as it settled into the infernoof its own making.
Then the light went out. The glare cut off abruptly. There was only adim redness where the space-port tarmac had been made incandescent for alittle while. That glow faded--and Cochrane became aware of theenormous stillness. He had not really noticed the rocket's deafeningroar until it ended.
The helicab flew onward almost silently, with only the throbbing pulsesof its overhead vanes making any sound at all.
"_I kidded myself about those rockets, too_," said Cochrane bitterly tohimself. "_I thought getting to the moon meant starting to the stars.New worlds to live on. I had a lot more fun before I found out the factsof life!_"
But he knew that this cynicism and this bitterness came out of the hurtto the vanity that still insisted everything was a mistake. He'dreceived orders which disillusioned him about his importance to the firmand to the business to which he'd given years of his life. It hurt tofind out that he was just another man, just another expendable. Mostpeople fought against making the discovery, and some succeeded inavoiding it. But Cochrane saw his own self-deceptions with a savageclarity even as he tried to keep them. He did not admire himself at all.
The helicab began to slant down toward the space-port buildings. The skywas full of stars. The earth--of course--was covered with buildings.Except for the space-port there was no unoccupied ground for thirtymiles in any direction. The cab was down to a thousand feet. To fivehundred. Cochrane saw the just-arrived rocket with tender-vehiclesrunning busily to and fro and hovering around it. He saw the rocket heshould take, standing upright on the faintly lighted field.
The cab touched ground. Cochrane stood up and paid the fare. He got outand the cab rose four or five feet and flitted over to the waiting-line.
He went into the space-port building. He felt himself growing morebitter still. Then he found Bill Holden--Doctor William Holden--standingdejectedly against a wall.
"I believe you've got some orders for me, Bill," said Cochranesardonically. "And just what psychiatric help can I give you?"
Holden said tiredly:
"I don't like this any better than you do, Jed. I'm scared to death ofspace-travel. But go get your ticket and I'll tell you about it on theway up. It's a special production job. I'm roped in on it too."
"Happy holiday!" said Cochrane, because Holden looked about as miserableas a man could look.
He went to the ticket desk. He gave his name. On request, he producedidentification. Then he said sourly:
"While you're working on this I'll make a phone-call."
He went to a pay visiphone. And again there were different levels ofawareness in his mind--one consciously and defensively cynical, and onefrightened at the revelation of his unimportance, and the third findingthe others an unedifying spectacle.
He put the call through with an over-elaborate confidence which heangrily recognized as an attempt to deceive himself. He got the office.He said calmly:
"This is Jed Cochrane. I asked for a visiphone contact with Mr.Hopkins."
He had a secretary on the phone-screen. She looked at memos and saidpleasantly:
"Oh, yes. Mr. Hopkins is at dinner. He said he couldn't be disturbed,but for you to go on to the moon according to your instructions, Mr.Cochrane."
Cochrane hung up and raged, with one part of his mind. Another part--andhe despised it--began to argue that after all, he had better wait beforethinking there was any intent to humiliate him. After all, his ordersmust have been issued with due consideration. The third part dislikedthe other two parts intensely--one for raging without daring to speak,and one for trying to find alibis for not even raging. He went back tothe ticket-desk. The clerk said heartily:
"Here you are! The rest of your party's already on board, Mr. Cochrane.You'd better hurry! Take-off's in five minutes."
Holden joined him. They went through the gate and got into thetender-vehicle that would rush them out to the rocket. Holden saidheavily:
"I was waiting for you and hoping you wouldn't come. I'm not a goodtraveller, Jed."
The small vehicle rushed. To a city man, the dark ex
panse of thespace-port was astounding. Then a spidery metal framework swallowed thetender-truck, and them. The vehicle stopped. An elevator accepted themand lifted an indefinite distance through the night, toward the stars. Asort of gangplank with a canvas siderail reached out across emptiness.Cochrane crossed it, and found himself at the bottom of a spiral rampinside the rocket's passenger-compartment. A stewardess looked at thetickets. She led the way up, and stopped.
"This is your seat, Mr. Cochrane," she said professionally. "I'll strapyou in this first time. You'll do it later."
Cochrane lay down in a contour-chair with an eight-inch mattress of foamrubber. The stewardess adjusted straps. He thought bitter, ironicthoughts. A voice said:
"Mr. Cochrane!"
He turned his head. There was Babs Deane, his secretary, with her eyesvery bright. She regarded him from a contour-chair exactly opposite his.She said happily:
"Mr. West and Mr. Jamison are the science men, Mr. Cochrane. I got Mr.Bell as the writer."
"A great triumph!" Cochrane told her. "Did you get any idea what allthis is about? Why we're going up?"
"No," admitted Babs cheerfully. "I haven't the least idea. But I'm goingto the moon! It's the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me!"
Cochrane shrugged his shoulders. Shrugging was not comfortable in thestraps that held him. Babs was a good secretary. She was the only oneCochrane had ever had who did not try to make use of her position assecretary to the producer of the Dikkipatti Hour on television. Othersecretaries had used their nearness to him to wangle acting or dancingor singing assignments on other and lesser shows. As a rule they lastedjust four public appearances before they were back at desks, spoiled forfurther secretarial use by their taste of fame. But Babs hadn't triedthat. Yet she'd jumped at a chance for a trip to the moon.
A panel up toward the nose of the rocket--the upper end of thispassenger compartment--glowed suddenly. Flaming red letters said,"_Take-off, ninety seconds._"
Cochrane found an ironic flavor in the thought that splendid daring andincredible technology had made his coming journey possible. Heroes hadventured magnificently into the emptiness beyond Earth's atmosphere.Uncountable millions of dollars had been spent. Enormous intelligenceand infinite pains had been devoted to making possible a journey of twohundred thirty-six thousand miles through sheer nothingness. This wasthe most splendid achievement of human science--the reaching of asatellite of Earth and the building of a human city there.
And for what? Undoubtedly so that one Jed Cochrane could be ordered bytelephone, by somebody's secretary, to go and get on a passenger-rocketand get to the moon. Go--having failed to make a protest because hisboss wouldn't interrupt dinner to listen--so he could keep his job byobeying. For this splendid purpose, scientists had labored and dedicatedmen had risked their lives.
Of course, Cochrane reminded himself with conscious justice, of coursethere was the very great value of moon-mail cachets to devotees ofphilately. There was the value of the tourist facilities to anybody whocould spend that much money for something to brag about afterward. Therewere the solar-heat mines--running at a slight loss--and various otherfine achievements. There was even a nightclub in Lunar City where onehighball cost the equivalent of--say--a week's pay for a secretary likeBabs. And--
The panel changed its red glowing sign. It said: "_Take-off forty-fiveseconds._"
Somewhere down below a door closed with a cushioned soft definiteness.The inside of the rocket suddenly seemed extraordinarily still. Thesilence was oppressive. It was dead. Then there came the whirring ofvery many electric fans, stirring up the air.
The stewardess' voice came matter-of-factly from below him in theupended cylinder which was the passenger-space.
"We take off in forty-five seconds. You will find yourself feeling veryheavy. There is no cause to be alarmed. If you observe that breathing isoppressive, the oxygen content of the air in this ship is well aboveearth-level, and you will not need to breathe so deeply. Simply relax inyour chair. Everything has been thought of. Everything has been testedrepeatedly. You need not disturb yourself at all. Simply relax."
Silence. Two heart-beats. Three.
There was a roar. It was a deep, booming, numbing roar that came fromsomewhere outside the rocket's hull. Simultaneously, something thrustCochrane deep into the foam-cushions of his contour-chair. He felt thecushion piling up on all sides of his body so that it literallysurrounded him. It resisted the tendency of his arms and legs andabdomen to flatten out and flow sidewise, to spread him in a thin layerover the chair in which he rested.
He felt his cheeks dragged back. He was unduly conscious of the weightof objects in his pockets. His stomach pressed hard against hisbackbone. His sensations were those of someone being struck a hard,prolonged blow all over his body.
It was so startling a sensation, though he'd read about it, that hesimply stayed still and blankly submitted to it. Presently he felthimself gasp. Presently, again, he noticed that one of his feet wasgoing to sleep. He tried to move it and succeeded only in stirring itfeebly. The roaring went on and on and on....
The red letters in the panel said: "_First stage ends in five seconds._"
By the time he'd read it, the rocket hiccoughed and stopped. Then hefelt a surge of panic. He was falling! He had no weight! It was thesensation of a suddenly dropping elevator a hundred times multiplied. Hebounced out of the depression in the foam-cushion. He was prevented fromfloating away only by the straps that held him.
There was a sputter and a series of jerks. Then he had weight again asroarings began once more. This was not the ghastly continued impact ofthe take-off, but still it was weight--considerably greater weight thanthe normal weight of Earth. Cochrane wiggled the foot that had gone tosleep. Pins and needles lessened their annoyance as sensation returnedto it. He was able to move his arms and hands. They felt abnormallyheavy, and he experienced an extreme and intolerable weariness. Hewanted to go to sleep.
This was the second-stage rocket-phase. The moon-rocket had blasted offat six gravities acceleration until clear of atmosphere and a littlemore. Acceleration-chairs of remarkably effective design, plus thepre-saturation of one's blood with oxygen, made so high an accelerationsafe and not unendurable for the necessary length of time it lasted.Now, at three gravities, one did not feel on the receiving end of aviolent thrust, but one did feel utterly worn out and spent. Most peoplestayed awake through the six-gravity stage and went heavily to sleepunder three gravities.
Cochrane fought the sensation of fatigue. He had not liked himself foraccepting the orders that had brought him here. They had been issued inbland confidence that he had no personal affairs which could not beabandoned to obey cryptic orders from the secretary of a boss he hadactually never seen. He felt a sort of self-contempt which it would havebeen restful to forget in three-gravity sleep. But he grimaced and heldhimself awake to contemplate the unpretty spectacle of himself and hisactions.
The red light said: "_Second stage ends ten seconds._"
And in ten seconds the rockets hiccoughed once more and were silent, andthere was that sickening feeling of free fall, but he grimly madehimself think of it as soaring upward instead of dropping--which was thefact, too--and waited until the third-stage rockets boomed suddenly andwent on and on and on.
This was nearly normal acceleration; the effect of this acceleration wasthe feel of nearly normal weight. He felt about as one would feel inEarth in a contour-chair tilted back so that one faced the ceiling. Heknew approximately where the ship would be by this time, and it ought tohave been a thrill. Cochrane was hundreds of miles above Earth andheaded eastward out and up. If a port were open at this height, hisglance should span continents.
No.... The ship had taken off at night. It would still be in Earth'sshadow. There would be nothing at all to be seen below, unless one ortwo small patches of misty light which would be Earth's too-many greatcities. But overhead there would be stars by myriads and myriads, ofevery possible color and degree of brightnes
s. They would crowd eachother for room in which to shine. The rocket-ship was spiralling out andout and up and up, to keep its rendezvous with the space platform.
The platform, of course, was that artificial satellite of Earth whichwas four thousand miles out and went around the planet in a little overfour hours, traveling from west to east. It had been made because tobreak the bonds of Earth's gravity was terribly costly in fuel--when aship had to accelerate slowly to avoid harm to human cargo. The spaceplatform was a filling station in emptiness, at which the moon-rocketwould refuel for its next and longer and much less difficult journey oftwo hundred thirty-odd thousand miles.
The stewardess came up the ramp, moving briskly. She stopped and glancedat each passenger in each chair in turn. When Cochrane turned his openeyes upon her, she said soothingly:
"There's no need to be disturbed. Everything is going perfectly."
"I'm not disturbed," said Cochrane. "I'm not even nervous. I'm perfectlyall right."
"But you should be drowsy!" she observed, concerned. "Most people are.If you nap you'll feel better for it."
She felt his pulse in a businesslike manner. It was normal.
"Take my nap for me," said Cochrane, "or put it back in stock. I don'twant it. I'm perfectly all right."
She considered him carefully. She was remarkably pretty. But her mannerwas strictly detached. She said:
"There's a button. You can reach it if you need anything. You may callme by pushing it."
He shrugged. He lay still as she went on to inspect the otherpassengers. There was nothing to do and nothing to see. Travellers weretreated pretty much like parcels, these days. Travel, like televisionentertainment and most of the other facilities of human life, wasdesigned for the seventy-to-ninety-per-cent of the human race whoselikes and dislikes and predilections could be learned exactly bysurveys. Anybody who didn't like what everybody liked, or didn't reactlike everybody reacted, was subject to annoyances. Cochrane resignedhimself to them.
The red light-letters changed again, considerably later. This time theysaid: "_Free flight, thirty seconds._"
They did not say "free fall," which was the technical term for a rocketcoasting upward or downward in space. But Cochrane braced himself, andhis stomach-muscles were tense when the rockets stopped again and stayedoff. The sensation of continuous fall began. An electronic speakerbeside his chair began to speak. There were other such mechanisms besideeach other passenger-chair, and the interior of the rocket filled with asoft murmur which was sardonically like choral recitation.
"_The sensation of weightlessness you now experience_," said the voicesoothingly, "_is natural at this stage of your flight. The ship hasattained its maximum intended speed and is still rising to meet thespace platform. You may consider that we have left atmosphere and itslimitations behind. Now we have spread sails of inertia and glide on awind of pure momentum toward our destination. The feeling ofweightlessness is perfectly normal. You will be greatly interested inthe space platform. We will reach it in something over two hours of freeflight. It is an artificial satellite, with an air-lock our ship willenter for refueling. You will be able to leave the ship and move aboutinside the Platform, to lunch if you choose, to buy souvenirs and mailthem back and to view Earth from a height of four thousand miles throughquartz-glass windows. Then, as now, you will feel no sensation ofweight. You will be taken on a tour of the space platform if you wish.There are rest-rooms--._"
Cochrane grimly endured the rest of the taped lecture. He thought sourlyto himself: "_I'm a captive audience without even an interest in theproduction tricks._"
Presently he saw Bill Holden's head. The psychiatrist had squirmedinside the straps that held him, and now was staring about within therocket. His complexion was greenish.
"I understand you're to brief me," Cochrane told him, "on the way up. Doyou want to tell me now what all this is about? I'd like a nice dramaticnarrative, with gestures."
Holden said sickly:
"Go to hell, won't you?"
His head disappeared. Space-nausea was, of course, as definite anailment as seasickness. It came from no weight. But Cochrane seemed tobe immune. He turned his mind to the possible purposes of his journey.He knew nothing at all. His own personal share in the activities ofKursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe--the biggest advertising agency inthe world--was the production of the Dikkipatti Hour, top-talenttelevision show, regularly every Wednesday night between eight-thirtyand nine-thirty o'clock central U. S. time. It was a good show. It wasamong the ten most popular shows on three continents. It was notreasonable that he be ordered to drop it and take orders from apsychiatrist, even one he'd known unprofessionally for years. But therewas not much, these days, that really made sense.
In a world where cities with populations of less than five millions wereconsidered small towns, values were peculiar. One of the deplorableresults of living in a world over-supplied with inhabitants was thatthere were too many people and not enough jobs. When one had a good job,and somebody higher up than oneself gave an order, it was obeyed. Therewas always somebody else or several somebodies waiting for every jobthere was--hoping for it, maybe praying for it. And if a good job waslost, one had to start all over.
This task might be anything. It was not, however, connected in any waywith the weekly production of the Dikkipatti Hour. And if thatproduction were scamped this week because Cochrane was away, he would bethe one to take the loss in reputation. The fact that he was on the moonwouldn't count. It would be assumed that he was slipping. And a slip wasnot good. It was definitely not good!
"_I could do a documentary right now_," Cochrane told himself angrily,"_titled 'Man-afraid-of-his-job.' I could make a very authenticproduction. I've got the material!_"
He felt weight for a moment. It was accompanied by booming noises. Thesounds were not in the air outside, because there was no air. They werereverberations of the rocket-motors themselves, transmitted to thefabric of the ship. The ship's steering-rockets were correcting thecourse of the vessel and--yes, there was another surge of power--nudgingit to a more correct line of flight to meet the space platform coming upfrom behind. The platform went around the world six times a day, fourthousand miles out. During three of its revolutions anybody on theground, anywhere, could spot it in daylight as an infinitesimal star,bright enough to be seen against the sky's blueness, rising in the westand floating eastward to set at the place of sunrise.
There was again weightlessness. A rocket-ship doesn't burn itsrocket-engines all the time. It runs them to get started, and it runsthem to stop, but it does not run them to travel. This ship was floatingabove the Earth, which might be a vast sunlit ball filling half theuniverse below the rocket, or might be a blackness as of the Pit.Cochrane had lost track of time, but not of the shattering effect ofbeing snatched from the job he knew and thought important, to travelincredibly to do something he had no idea of. He felt, in his mind, likesomebody who climbs stairs in the dark and tries to take a step thatisn't there. It was a shock to find that his work wasn't important evenin the eyes of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe. That he didn'tcount. That nothing counted ...
There was another dull booming outside and another touch of weight. Thenthe rocket floated on endlessly.
A long time later, something touched the ship's outer hull. It was adefinite, positive clanking sound. And then there was the gentlest andvaguest of tuggings, and Cochrane could feel the ship being maneuvered.He knew it had made contact with the space platform and was being drawninside its lock.
There was still no weight. The stewardess began to unstrap thepassengers one by one, supplying each with magnetic-soled slippers.Cochrane heard her giving instructions in their use. He knew theair-lock was being filled with air from the huge, globular platform. Intime the door at the back--bottom--base of the passenger-compartmentopened. Somebody said flatly:
"Space platform! The ship will be in this air-lock for some three hoursplus for refueling. Warning will be given before departure. Passengersha
ve the freedom of the platform and will be given every possibleprivilege."
The magnetic-soled slippers did hold one's feet to the spiral ramp, butone had to hold on to a hand-rail to make progress. On the way down tothe exit door, Cochrane encountered Babs. She said breathlessly:
"I can't believe I'm really here!"
"I can believe it," said Cochrane, "without even liking it particularly.Babs, who told you to come on this trip? Where'd all the orders comefrom?"
"Mr. Hopkins' secretary," said Babs happily. "She didn't tell me tocome. I managed that! She said for me to name two science men and twowriters who could work with you. I told her one writer was more thanenough for any production job, but you'd need me. I assumed it was aproduction job. So she changed the orders and here I am!"
"Fine!" said Cochrane. His sense of the ironic deepened. He'd thought hewas an executive and reasonably important. But somebody higher up thanhe was had disposed of him with absent-minded finality, and that man'ssecretary and his own had determined all the details, and he didn'tcount at all. He was a pawn in the hands of firm-partners and assortedsecretaries. "Let me know what my job's to be and how to do it, Babs."
Babs nodded. She didn't catch the sarcasm. But she couldn't think verystraight, just now. She was on the space platform, which was the secondmost glamorous spot in the universe. The most glamorous spot, of course,was the moon.
Cochrane hobbled ashore into the platform, having no weight whatever. Hewas able to move only by the curious sticky adhesion of hismagnetic-soled slippers to the steel floor-plates beneath him. Or--werethey beneath? There was a crew member walking upside down on a floorwhich ought to be a ceiling directly over Cochrane's head. He opened adoor in a side-wall and went in, still upside down. Cochrane felt asudden dizziness, at that.
But he went on, using hand-grips. Then he saw Dr. William Holden lookinggreenish and ill and trying sickishly to answer questions from West andJamison and Bell, who had been plucked from their private lives just asCochrane had and were now clamorously demanding of Bill Holden that heexplain what had happened to them.
Cochrane snapped angrily:
"Leave the man alone! He's space-sick! If you get him too much upsetthis place will be a mess!"
Holden closed his eyes and said gratefully:
"Shoo them away, Jed, and then come back."
Cochrane waved his hands at them. They went away, stumbling and holdingon to each other in the eerie dream-likeness and nightmarish situationof no-weight-whatever. There were other passengers from the moon-rocketin this great central space of the platform. There was a fat womanlooking indignantly at the picture of a weighing-scale painted on thewall. Somebody had painted it, with a dial-hand pointing to zero pounds.A sign said, "_Honest weight, no gravity._" There was the stewardessfrom the rocket, off duty here. She smoked a cigarette in the blast ofan electric fan. There was a party of moon-tourists giggling foolishlyand clutching at everything and buying souvenirs to mail back to Earth.
"All right, Bill," said Cochrane. "They're gone. Now tell me why all thenot inconsiderable genius in the employ of Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins andFallowe, in my person, has been mobilized and sent up to the moon?"
Bill Holden swallowed. He stood up with his eyes closed, holding onto aside-rail in the great central room of the platform.
"I have to keep my eyes shut," he explained, queasily. "It makes me illto see people walking on side-walls and across ceilings."
A stout tourist was doing exactly that at the moment. If one could walkanywhere at all with magnetic-soled shoes, one could walk everywhere.The stout man did walk up the side-wall. He adventured onto the ceiling,where he was head-down to the balance of his party. He stood therelooking up--down--at them, and he wore a peculiarly astonished andhalf-frightened and wholly foolish grin. His wife squealed for him tocome down: that she couldn't bear looking at him so.
"All right," said Cochrane. "You're keeping your eyes closed. But I'msupposed to take orders from you. What sort of orders are you going togive?"
"I'm not sure yet," said Holden thinly. "We are sent up here on aprivate job for Hopkins--one of your bosses. Hopkins has a daughter.She's married to a man named Dabney. He's neurotic. He's made a greatscientific discovery and it isn't properly appreciated. So you and I andyour team of tame scientists--we're on our way to the Moon to save hisreason."
"Why save his reason?" asked Cochrane cynically. "If it makes him happyto be a crackpot--"
"It doesn't," said Holden, with his eyes still closed. He gulped. "Yourjob and a large part of my practice depends on keeping him out of alooney-bin. It amounts to a public-relations job, a production, with memerely censoring aspects that might be bad for Dabney's psyche.Otherwise he'll be frustrated."
"Aren't we all?" demanded Cochrane. "Who in hades does he think he is?Most of us want appreciation, but we have to be glad when we do our workand get paid for it! We--"
Then he swore bitterly. He had been taken off the job he'd spent yearslearning to do acceptably, to phoney a personal satisfaction for theson-in-law of one of the partners of the firm he worked for. It washumiliation to be considered merely a lackey who could be ordered toperform personal services for his boss, without regard to the damage tothe work he was really responsible for. It was even more humiliating toknow he had to do it because he couldn't afford not to.
Babs appeared, obviously gloating over the mere fact that she waswalking in magnetic-soled slippers on the steel decks of the spaceplatform. Her eyes were very bright. She said:
"Mr. Cochrane, hadn't you better come look at Earth out of the quartzEarthside windows?"
"Why?" demanded Cochrane bitterly. "If it wasn't that I'd have to holdonto something with both hands, in order to do it, I'd be kickingmyself. Why should I want to do tourist stuff?"
"So," said Babs, "so later on you can tell when a writer or a scenicdesigner tries to put something over on you in a space platform show."
Cochrane grimaced.
"In theory, I should. But do you realize what all this is about? I justlearned!" When Babs shook her head he said sardonically, "We are on theway to the Moon to stage a private production out of sheer cruelty.We're hired to rob a happy man of the luxury of feeling sorry forhimself. We're under Holden's orders to cure a man of being a crackpot!"
Babs hardly listened. She was too much filled with the zest of beingwhere she'd never dared hope to be able to go.
"I wouldn't want to be cured of being a crackpot," protested Cochrane,"if only I could afford such a luxury! I'd--"
Babs said urgently:
"You'll have to hurry, really! They told me it starts in ten minutes, soI came to find you right away."
"What starts?"
"We're in eclipse now," explained Babs, starry-eyed. "We're in theEarth's shadow. In about five minutes we'll be coming out into sunlightagain, and we'll see the new Earth!"
"Guarantee that it will be a new Earth," Cochrane said morosely, "andI'll come. I didn't do too well on the old one."
But he followed her in all the embarrassment of walking onmagnetic-soled shoes in a total absence of effective gravity. It wasquite a job simply to start off. Without precaution, if he merely triedto march away from where he was, his feet would walk out from under himand he'd be left lying on his back in mid-air. Again, to stop withoutputting one foot out ahead for a prop would mean that after his feetpaused, his body would continue onward and he would achieve afull-length face-down flop. And besides, one could not walk with aregular up-and-down motion, or in seconds he would find his feetchurning emptiness in complete futility.
Cochrane tried to walk, and then irritably took a hand-rail and hauledhimself along it, with his legs trailing behind him like the tail of aswimming mermaid. He thought of the simile and was not impressed by hisown dignity.
Presently Babs halted herself in what was plainly a metal blister in theouter skin of the platform. There was a round quartz window, showing theinside of steel-plate windows beyond it. Babs pushed a button marked"_Sh
utter_," and the valves of steel drew back.
Cochrane blinked, lifted even out of his irritableness by the sightbefore him.
He saw the immensity of the heavens, studded with innumerable stars.Some were brighter than others, and they were of every imaginable color.Tiny glintings of lurid tint--through the Earth's atmosphere they wouldblend into an indefinite faint luminosity--appeared so close togetherthat there seemed no possible interval. However tiny the appearance of agap, one had but to look at it for an instant to perceive infinitesimalflecks of colored fire there, also.
Each tiniest glimmering was a sun. But that was not what made Cochranecatch his breath.
There was a monstrous space of nothingness immediately before his eyes.It was round and vast and near. It was black with the utter blackness ofthe Pit. It was Earth, seen from its eight-thousand-mile-wide shadow,unlighted even by the Moon. There was no faintest relief from itsabsolute darkness. It was as if, in the midst of the splendor of theheavens, there was a chasm through which one glimpsed the unthinkablenothing from which creation was called in the beginning. Until onerealized that this was simply the dark side of Earth, the spectacle wasone of hair-raising horror.
After a moment Cochrane said with a carefully steadied voice:
"My most disparaging opinions of Earth were never as black as this!"
"Wait," said Babs confidently.
Cochrane waited. He had to hold carefully in his mind that this visibleabyss, this enormity of purest dark, was not an opening into nothingnessbut was simply Earth at night as seen from space.
Then he saw a faint, faint arch of color forming at its edge. It spreadswiftly. Immediately, it seemed, there was a pinkish glowing line amongthe multitudinous stars. It was red. It was very, very bright. It becamea complete half-circle. It was the light of the sun refracted around theedge of the world.
Within minutes--it seemed in seconds--the line of light was a gloryamong the stars. And then, very swiftly, the blazing orb which was thesun appeared from behind Earth. It was intolerably bright, but it didnot brighten the firmament. It swam among all the myriads of myriads ofsuns, burning luridly and in a terrible silence, with visibly writhingprominences rising from the edge of its disk. Cochrane squinted at itwith light-dazzled eyes.
Then Babs cried softly:
"Beautiful! Oh, beautiful!"
And Cochrane shielded his eyes and saw the world new-born before him.The arc of light became an arch and then a crescent, and swelled even ashe looked. Dawn flowed below the space platform, and it seemed that seasand continents and clouds and beauty poured over the disk of darknessbefore him.
He stood here, staring, until the steel shutters slowly closed. Babssaid in regret:
"You have to keep your hand on the button to keep the shutters open.Else the window might get pitted with dust."
Cochrane said cynically:
"And how much good will it have done me to see that, Babs? How can thatbe faked in a studio--and how much would a television screen show ofit?"
He turned away. Then he added sourly:
"You stay and look if you like, Babs. I've already had my vanity smashedto little bits. If I look at that again I'll want to weep in purefrustration because I can't do anything even faintly as well worthwatching. I prefer to cut down my notions of the cosmos to a tolerablesize. But you go ahead and look!"
He went back to Holden. Holden was painfully dragging himself back intothe rocket-ship. Cochrane went with him. They returned, weightless, tothe admirably designed contour-chairs in which they had traveled to thisplace, and in which they would travel farther. Cochrane settled down tostare numbly at the wall above him. He had been humiliated enough by theactions of one of the heads of an advertising agency. He found himselfresenting, even as he experienced, the humbling which had been imposedupon him by the cosmos itself.
Presently the other passengers returned, and the moonship was maneuveredout of the lock and to emptiness again, and again presently rocketsroared and there was further feeling of intolerable weight. But it wasnot as bad as the take-off from Earth.
There followed some ninety-six hours of pure tedium. After the firstaccelerating blasts, the rockets were silent. There was no weight.There was nothing to hear except the droning murmur of unrestingelectric fans, stirring the air ceaselessly so that excess moisture frombreathing could be extracted by the dehumidifiers. But for them--if theair had been left stagnant--the journey would have been insupportable.
There was nothing to see, because ports opening on outer space were notsafe for passengers to look through. Mere humans, untrained to keeptheir minds on technical matters, could break down at the spectacle ofthe universe. There could be no activity.
Some of the passengers took dozy-pills. Cochrane did not. It was againstthe law for dozy-pills to produce a sensation of euphoria, ofwell-being. The law considered that pleasure might lead to addiction.But if a pill merely made a person drowsy, so that he dozed for hourshalfway between sleeping and awake, no harm appeared to be done. Yetthere were plenty of dozy-pill addicts. Many people were not especiallyanxious to feel good. They were quite satisfied not to feel anything atall.
Cochrane couldn't take that way of escape. He lay strapped in his chairand thought unhappily of many things. He came to feel unclean, as peopleused to feel when they traveled for days on end on railroad trains.There was no possibility of a bath. One could not even change clothes,because baggage went separately to the moon in a robot freight-rocket,which was faster and cheaper than a passenger transport, but would killanybody who tried to ride it. Fifteen-and twenty-gravity acceleration iseconomical of fuel, and six-gravity is not, but nobody can live througha twenty-gravity lift-off from Earth. So passengers stayed in theclothes in which they entered the ship, and the only possible concessionto fastidiousness was the disposable underwear one could get and changeto in the rest-rooms.
Babs Deane did not take dozy-pills either, but Cochrane knew better thanto be more than remotely friendly with her outside of office hours. Hedid not want to give her any excuse to tell him anything for his owngood. So he spoke pleasantly and kept company only with his ownthoughts. But he did notice that she looked rapt and starry-eyed eventhrough the long and dreary hours of free flight. She was mentallytracking the moonship through the void. She'd know when the continentsof Earth were plain to see, and the tints of vegetation on the twohemispheres--northern and southern--and she'd know when Earth'sice-caps could be seen, and why.
The stewardess was not too much of a diversion. She was brisk and calmand soothing, but she became a trifle reluctant to draw too near thechairs in which her passengers rode. Presently Cochrane made deductionsand maliciously devised a television commercial. In it, a moon-rocketstewardess, in uniform and looking fresh and charming, would say sweetlythat she went without bathing for days at a time on moon-trips, and didnot offend because she used whoosit's antistinkum. And then he thoughtpleasurably of the heads that would roll did such a commercial actuallyget on the air.
But he didn't make plans for the production-job he'd been sent to themoon to do. Psychiatry was specialized, these days, as physical medicinehad been before it. An extremely expensive diagnostician had been sentto the moon to tap Dabney's reflexes, and he'd gravely diagnosedfrustration and suggested young Dr. Holden for the curative treatment.Frustration was the typical neurosis of the rich, anyhow, and BillHolden had specialized in its cure. His main reliance was on the makingof a dramatic production centering about his patient, which wasexpensive enough and effective enough to have made him a quickreputation. But he couldn't tell Cochrane what was required of him. Notyet. He knew the disease but not the case. He'd have to see and knowDabney before he could make use of the extra-special production-crew hispatient's father-in-law had provided from the staff of Kursten, Kasten,Hopkins and Fallowe.
Ninety-some hours after blast-off from the space platform, therocket-ship turned end for end and began to blast to kill its velocitytoward the moon. It began at half-gravity--the red glowing sign g
avewarning of it--and rose to one gravity and then to two. After days ofno-weight, two gravities was punishing.
Cochrane thought to look at Babs. She was rapt, lost in picturings ofwhat must be outside the ship, which she could not see. She'd beimagining what the television screens had shown often enough, fromfilm-tapes. The great pock marked face of Luna, with its ring-mountainsin incredible numbers and complexity, and the vast open "seas" whichwere solidified oceans of lava, would be clear to her mind's eye. Shewould be imagining the gradual changes of the moon's face with nearness,when the colorings appear. From a distance all the moon seems tan orsandy in tint. When one comes closer, there are tawny reds andslate-colors in the mountain-cliffs, and even blues and yellows, andeverywhere there is the ashy, whitish-tan color of the moondust.
Glancing at her, absorbed in her satisfaction, Cochrane suspected thatwith only half an excuse she would explain to him how the severalhundreds of degrees difference in the surface-temperature of the moonbetween midnight and noon made rocks split and re-split and fracture sothat stuff as fine as talcum powder covered every space not too sharplytilted for it to rest on.
The feeling of deceleration increased. For part of a second they had thesensation of three gravities.
Then there was a curious, yielding jar--really very slight--and then thefeeling of excess weight ended altogether. But not the feeling ofweight. They still had weight. It was constant. It was steady. But itwas very slight.
They were on the moon, but Cochrane felt no elation. In the tedioushours from the space platform he'd thought too much. He was actuallyaware of the humiliations and frustrations most men had to conceal fromthemselves because they couldn't afford expensive psychiatrictreatments. Frustration was the disease of all humanity, these days. Andthere was nothing that could be done about it. Nothing! It simply wasn'tpossible to rebel, and rebellion is the process by which humiliation andfrustration is cured. But one could not rebel against the plain factthat Earth had more people on it than one planet could support.
Merely arriving at the moon did not seem an especially usefulachievement, either to Cochrane or to humanity at large.
Things looked bad.