There will be an orbital stopover around Mars, to send supplies down to Burroughs City. And more stops in the belt. But then the Charon will begin to gather speed. It will be going very fast when it reaches Jupiter. And much faster after it whips by, using the gravity of the giant planet like a slingshot to boost its acceleration.
After that there are no stops for the Charon. No stops at all until it reaches me, out here at the Cerberus Star Ring, six million miles beyond Pluto.
My relief will have a long time to brood. As I did.
I’m still brooding now, today, four years later. But then, there’s not much else to do out here. Ringships are infrequent, and you get pretty weary of films and tapes and books after a time. So you brood. You think about your past, and dream about your future. And you try to keep the loneliness and the boredom from driving you out of your skull.
It’s been a long four years. But it’s almost over now. And it will be nice to get back. I want to walk on grass again, and see clouds, and eat an ice cream sundae.
Still, for all that, I don’t regret coming. These four years alone in the darkness have done me good, I think. It’s not as if I had left much. My days on Earth seem remote to me now, but I can still remember them if I try. The memories aren’t all that pleasant. I was pretty screwed up back then.
I needed time to think, and that’s one thing you get out here. The man who goes back on the Charon won’t be the same one who came out here four years ago. I’ll build a whole new life back on Earth. I know I will.
JUNE 20—Ship today.
I didn’t know it was coming, of course. I never do. The ringships are irregular, and the kind of energies I’m playing with out here turn radio signals into crackling chaos. By the time the ship finally punched through the static, the station’s scanners had already picked it up and notified me.
It was clearly a ringship. Much bigger than the old system rust-buckets like the Charon, and heavily armored to withstand the stresses of the nullspace vortex. It came straight on, with no attempt to decelerate.
While I was heading down to the control room to strap in, a thought hit me. This might be the last. Probably not, of course. There’s still three months to go, and that’s time enough for a dozen ships. But you can never tell. The ringships are irregular, like I said.
Somehow the thought disturbed me. The ships have been part of my life for four years now. An important part. And the one today might have been the last. If so, I want it all down here. I want to remember it. With good reason, I think. When the ships come, that makes everything else worthwhile.
The control room is in the heart of my quarters. It’s the center of everything, where the nerves and the tendons and the muscles of the station are gathered. But it’s not very impressive. The room is very small, and once the door slides shut the walls and floor and ceiling are all a featureless white.
There’s only one thing in the room: a horseshoe-shaped console that surrounds a single padded chair.
I sat down in that chair today for what might be the last time. I strapped myself in, and put on the earphones, and lowered the helmet. I reached for the controls and touched them and turned them on.
And the room vanished.
It’s all done with holographs, of course. I know that. But that doesn’t make a bit of difference when I’m sitting in that chair. Then, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not inside anymore. I’m out there, in the void. The control console is still there, and the chair. But the rest has gone. Instead, the aching darkness is everywhere, above me, below me, all around me. The distant sun is only one star among many, and all the stars are terribly far away.
That’s the way it always is. That’s the way it was today. When I threw that switch I was alone in the universe with the cold stars and the ring. The Cerberus Star Ring.
I saw the ring as if from outside, looking down on it. It’s a vast structure, really. But from out here, it’s nothing. It’s swallowed by the immensity of it all, a slim silver thread lost in the blackness.
But I know better. The ring is huge. My living quarters take up but a single degree in the circle it forms, a circle whose diameter is more than a hundred miles. The rest is circuitry and scanners and power banks. And the engines, the waiting nullspace engines.
The ring turned silent beneath me, its far side stretching away into nothingness. I touched a switch on my console. Below me, the nullspace engines woke.
In the center of the ring, a new star was born.
It was a tiny dot amid the dark at first. Green today, bright green. But not always, and not for long. Nullspace has many colors.
I could see the far side of the ring then, if I’d wanted to. It was glowing with a light of its own. Alive and awake, the nullspace engines were pouring unimaginable amounts of energy inward, to rip wide a hole in space itself.
The hole had been there long before Cerberus, long before man. Men found it, quite by accident, when they reached Pluto. They built the ring around it. Later they found two other holes, and built other star rings.
The holes were small, too small. But they could be enlarged. Temporarily, at the expense of vast amounts of power, they could be ripped open. Raw energy could be pumped through that tiny, unseen hole in the universe until the placid surface of nullspace roiled and lashed back, and the nullspace vortex formed.
And now it happened.
The star in the center of the ring grew and flattened. It was a pulsing disc, not a globe. But it was still the brightest thing in the heavens. And it swelled visibly. From the spinning green disc, flame-like orange spears lanced out, and fell back, and smoky bluish tendrils uncoiled. Specks of red danced and flashed among the green, grew and blended. The colors all began to run together.
The flat, spinning, multi-colored star doubled in size, doubled again, again. A few minutes before it had not been. Now it filled the ring, lapped against the silver walls, seared them with its awful energy. It began to spin faster and faster, a whirlpool in space, a maelstrom of flame and light.
The vortex. The nullspace vortex. The howling storm that is not a storm and does not howl, for there is no sound in space.
To it came the ringship. A moving star at first, it took on visible form and shape almost faster than my human eyes could follow. It became a dark silver bullet in the blackness, a bullet fired at the vortex.
The aim was good. The ship hit very close to the center of the ring. The swirling colors closed over it.
I hit my controls. Even more suddenly than it had come, the vortex was gone. The ship was gone too, of course. Once more there was only me, and the ring, and the stars.
Then I touched another switch, and I was back in the blank white control room, unstrapping. Unstrapping for what might be the last time, ever.
Somehow I hope not. I never thought I’d miss anything about this place. But I will. I’ll miss the ringships. I’ll miss moments like today.
I hope I get a few more chances at it before I give it up forever. I want to feel the nullspace engines wake again under my hands, and watch the vortex boil and churn while I float alone between the stars. Once more, at least. Before I go.
JUNE 23—That ringship has set me to thinking. Even more than usual.
It’s funny that with all the ships I’ve seen pass through the vortex, I’ve never even given a thought to riding one. There’s a whole new world on the other side of nullspace; Second Chance, a rich green planet of a star so far away that astronomers are still unsure whether it shares the same galaxy with us. That’s the funny thing about the holes—you can’t be sure where they lead until you go through.
When I was a kid, I read a lot about star travel. Most people didn’t think it was possible. But those that did always mentioned Alpha Centauri as the first system we’d explore and colonize. Closest, and all that. Funny how wrong they were. Instead, our colonies orbit suns we can’t even see. And I don’t think we’ll ever get to Alpha Centauri—
Somehow I never thought of the colonies i
n personal terms. Still can’t. Earth is where I failed before. That’s got to be where I succeed now. The colonies would be just another escape.
Like Cerberus?
JUNE 26—Ship today. So the other wasn’t the last, after all. But what about this one?
JUNE 29—Why does a man volunteer for a job like this? Why does a man run to a silver ring six million miles beyond Pluto, to guard a hole in space? Why throw away four years of life alone in the darkness?
Why?
I used to ask myself that, in the early days. I couldn’t answer it then. Now I think I can. I bitterly regretted the impulse that drove me out here, then. Now I think I understand it.
And it wasn’t really an impulse. I ran to Cerberus. Ran. Ran to escape from loneliness.
That doesn’t make sense?
Yet it does. I know about loneliness. It’s been the theme of my life. I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember.
But there are two kinds of loneliness.
Most people don’t realize the difference. I do. I’ve sampled both kinds.
They talk and write about the loneliness of the men who man the star rings. The lighthouses of space, and all that. And they’re right.
There are times, out here at Cerberus, when I think I’m the only man in the universe. Earth was just a fever dream. The people I remember were just creations of my own mind.
There are times, out here, when I want someone to talk to so badly that I scream, and start pounding on the walls. There are times when the boredom crawls under my skin and all but drives me mad.
But there are other times, too. When the ringships come. When I go outside to make repairs. Or when I just sit in the control chair, imaging myself out into the darkness to watch the stars.
Lonely? Yes. But a solemn, brooding, tragic loneliness that a man hates with a passion—and yet loves so much he craves for more.
And then there is the second kind of loneliness.
You don’t need the Cerberus Star Ring for that kind. You can find it anywhere on Earth. I know. I did. I found it everywhere I went, in everything I did.
It’s the loneliness of people trapped within themselves. The loneliness of people who have said the wrong thing so often that they don’t have the courage to say anything anymore.
The loneliness, not of distance, but of fear.
The loneliness of people who sit alone in furnished rooms in crowded cities, because they’ve got nowhere to go and no one to talk to. The loneliness of guys who go to bars to meet someone, only to discover they don’t know how to strike up a conversation, and wouldn’t have the courage to do so if they did.
There’s no grandeur to that kind of loneliness. No purpose and no poetry. It’s loneliness without meaning. It’s sad and squalid and pathetic, and it stinks of self-pity.
Oh yes, it hurts at times to be alone among the stars.
But it hurts a lot more to be alone at a party. A lot more.
JUNE 30—Reading yesterday’s entry. Talk about self-pity—
JULY 1—Reading yesterday’s entry. My flippant mask. After four years, I still fight back whenever I try to be honest with myself. That’s not good. If things are going to be any different this time, I have to understand myself.
So why do I have to ridicule myself when I admit that I’m lonely and vulnerable? Why do I have to struggle to admit that I was scared of life? No one’s ever going to read this thing. I’m talking to myself, about myself.
So why are there so many things I can’t bring myself to say?
JULY 4—No ringship today. Too bad. Earth ain’t never had no fireworks that could match the nullspace vortex, and I felt like celebrating.
But why do I keep Earth calendar out here, where the years are centuries and the seasons a dim memory? July is just like December. So what’s the use?
JULY 10—I dreamed of Karen last night. And now I can’t get her out of my skull.
I thought I buried her long ago. It was all a fantasy anyway. Oh, she liked me well enough. Loved me, maybe. But no more than a half-dozen other guys. I wasn’t really special to her, and she never realized just how special she was to me.
Nor how much I wanted to be special to her—how much I needed to be special to someone, somewhere.
So I elected her. But it was all a fantasy. And I knew it was, in my more rational moments. I had no right to be so hurt. I had no special claim on her.
But I thought I did, in my daydreams. And I was hurt. It was my fault, though, not hers.
Karen would never hurt anyone willingly. She just never realized how fragile I was.
Even out here, in the early years, I kept dreaming. I dreamed of how she’d change her mind. How she’d be waiting for me. Etc.
But that was more wish fulfillment. It was before I came to terms with myself out here. I know now that she won’t be waiting. She doesn’t need me, and never did. I was just a friend.
So I don’t much like dreaming about her. That’s bad. Whatever I do, I must not look up Karen when I get back. I have to start all over again. I have to find someone who does need me. And I won’t find her if I try to slip back into my old life.
JULY 18—A month since my relief left Earth. The Charon should be in the belt by now. Two months to go.
JULY 23—Nightmares. God help me.
I’m dreaming of Earth again. And Karen. I can’t stop. Every night it’s the same.
It’s funny, calling Karen a nightmare. Up to now she’s always been a dream. A beautiful dream, with her long, soft hair, and her laugh, and that funny way she had of grinning. But those dreams were always wish fulfillments. In the dreams Karen needed me and wanted me and loved me.
The nightmares have the bite of truth to them. They’re all the same. It’s always a replay of me and Karen, together on that last night.
It was a good night, as nights went for me. We ate at one of my favorite restaurants, and went to a show. We talked together easily, about many things. We laughed together, too.
Only later, back at her place, I reverted to form. When I tried to tell her how much she meant to me, I remember how awkward and stupid I felt, how I struggled to get things out, how I stumbled over my own words. So much came out wrong.
I remember how she looked at me then. Strangely. How she tried to disillusion me. Gently. She was always gentle. And I looked into her eyes and listened to her voice. But I didn’t find love, or need. Just—just pity, I guess.
Pity for an inarticulate jerk who’d been letting life pass him by without touching it. Not because he didn’t want to. But because he was afraid to and didn’t know how. She’d found that jerk, and loved him, in her way—she loved everybody. She’d tried to help, to give him some of her self-confidence, some of the courage and bounce that she faced life with. And, to an extent, she had.
Not enough, though. The jerk liked to make fantasies about the day he wouldn’t be lonely anymore. And when Karen tried to help him, he thought she was his fantasy come to life. Or deluded himself into thinking that. The jerk suspected the truth all along, of course, but he lied to himself about it.
And when the day came that he couldn’t lie any longer, he was still vulnerable enough to be hurt. He wasn’t the type to grow scar tissue easily. He didn’t have the courage to try again with someone else. So he ran.
I hope the nightmares stop. I can’t take them, night after night. I can’t take reliving that hour in Karen’s apartment.
I’ve had four years out here. I’ve looked at myself hard. I’ve changed what I didn’t like, or tried to. I’ve tried to cultivate that scar tissue, to gather the confidence I need to face the new rejections I’m going to meet before I find acceptance. But I know myself damn well now, and I know it’s only been a partial success. There will always be things that will hurt, things that I’ll never be able to face the way I’d like to.
Memories of that last hour with Karen are among those things. God, I hope the nightmares end.
JULY 26—More nightmares. Please, Kar
en. I loved you. Leave me alone. Please.
JULY 29—There was a ringship yesterday, thank God. I needed one. It helped take my mind off Earth, off Karen. And there was no nightmare last night, for the first time in a week. Instead I dreamed of the nullspace vortex. The raging silent storm.
AUGUST 1—The nightmares have returned. Not always Karen now. Older memories, too. Infinitely less meaningful, but still painful. All the stupid things I’ve said, all the girls I never met, all the things I never did.
Bad. Bad. I have to keep reminding myself. I’m not like that anymore. There’s a new me, a me I built out here, six million miles beyond Pluto. Made of steel and stars and nullspace, hard and confident and self-assured. And not afraid of life.
The past is behind me. But it still hurts.
AUGUST 2—Ship today. The nightmares continue. Damn.
AUGUST 3—No nightmare last night. Second time for that, that I’ve rested easy after opening the hole for a ringship during the day. (Day? Night? Nonsense out here—but I still write as if they had meaning. Four years haven’t even touched the Earth in me.) Maybe the vortex is scaring Karen away. But I never wanted to scare Karen away before. Besides, I shouldn’t need crutches.
AUGUST 13—Another ship came through a few nights ago. No dream afterward. A pattern!
I’m fighting the memories. I’m thinking of other things about Earth. The good times. There were a lot of them, really, and there will be lots more when I get back. I’m going to make sure of that. These nightmares are stupid. I won’t permit them to continue. There was so much else I shared with Karen, so much I’d like to recall. Why can’t I?