Return From The Stars Part 25

"And they agreed to it?"

I smiled in the darkness.

"I was the First Pilot. Gimma could not give rne orders, only suggest, I would weigh the chances and say yes or no. Most of the time, of course, I said yes. But in emergencies the decision was mine."

"And Olaf?"

"Well, you know Olaf a little by now. As you might imagine, I couldn't take off right away. But when it came down to it, I was the one who had sent Thomas out. Olaf couldn't deny that. So I took off. Without a rocket, of course."

"Without a rocket . . . ?"

"Yes, in a suit, with a gas shooter. It took a while, but not so very long. I had some trouble with the detector, which was practically a chest, awkward to handle. Weightless, of course, but when I was entering the cloud, I had to be careful not to hit anything. I ceased to see the cloud as I approached it; first the stars began to disappear, a few at a time, on the periphery, then half the sky got black; I looked back and saw the Prometheus glowing in the distance -- she had special equipment that made the hull luminous. Looked like a long white pencil with a ball at one end, the photon headlight. Then everything winked out. The transition was so abrupt. Maybe a second of black mist, then nothing. My radio was disconnected; instead, I had the detector hooked up to the earphones. It took me only a few minutes to fly to the edge of the cloud, but over two hours to drop to the surface -- I had to be careful. The electric flashlight was useless, as I had expected. I began the search. You know what stalact.i.tes look like in caves. . ."

"Yes."

"Something like that, only more outlandish. I'm talking about what I saw later, when the dust settled, because during my search I couldn't see a thing, as if someone had poured tar over the window of my suit. The box I had on straps. I moved the antenna and listened, then walked with both arms extended -- I'd never stumbled so much in my life. No harm, thanks only to the low gravity. With just a little visibility, of course, a man could have regained his balance ten times over. But this way -- it's hard to explain to someone who's never experienced it -- the planetoid was all jagged peaks, with boulders piled up around them, and wherever I put my foot I began falling, in that drunken slow motion, and I couldn't jump back up: that would send me soaring for a quarter of an hour. I simply had to wait, keep trying to walk on. The rubble slid beneath me, debris, pillars, shards of rock, everything was barely held in place, the force that held them was unusually weak -- which does not mean that if a boulder landed on a man, it would not kill him. The ma.s.s would act then, not the weight; there would be time to jump clear, of course, if you could see the thing falling. . . or at least hear it. But, then, there was no air, so it was only by the vibration under my feet that I could tell whether I had again sent some rock structure toppling, and I could do nothing but wait for a fragment to come out of the pitch-dark and begin to crush me. . . I wandered about for hours and no longer thought that my idea of using the detector was brilliant. I also had to be careful because now and then I would find myself in the air, that is, floating, as in some clownish dream. At last I caught a signal. I must have lost it eight times, I don't remember exactly, but by the time I found the rocket, it was night on the Prometheus.

"The rocket stood at an angle, half-buried in that fiendish dust. The softest, most delicate stuff you can imagine. Almost insubstantial. The lightest fluff on Earth would offer more resistance. The particles were so incredibly small. . . I checked inside the rocket; he was not there. I've said that it stood at an angle, but I wasn't at all sure; it was impossible to find the vertical without using special equipment, and that would've taken at least an hour, and a conventional plumb line, weighing practically nothing, was useless, since the bob wouldn't have held the string tight. . . I wasn't surprised, then, that he hadn't tried to take off. I entered. I saw immediately that he had jury-rigged something to determine the vertical but that it hadn't worked. There was plenty of food left, but no oxygen. He must have transferred it all to the tank on his suit and left."

"Why?"

"Yes, why. He had been there three days. In that type of rocket you have only a seat, a screen, the control, levers, and a hatch at the rear. I sat there for a while. I realized that I would never be able to find him. For a second I thought that possibly he had gone out just as I landed, that he'd used his gas shooter to return to the Prometheus and was sitting on board now, while I wandered over these drunken stones. . . I jumped out of the rocket so energetically that I flew upward. No sense of direction, nothing. You know how it is when you see a spark in total darkness? The eyes fantasize, there are rays, visions. Well, with the sense of balance, something similar can happen. In zero gravity there's no problem, a person accustoms himself. But when gravity is extremely weak, as on that planetoid, the inner ear reacts erratically, if not irrationally. You think you're zooming up like a Roman candle, then plummeting, and so on, all the time. And then the sensations of spinning and shifting, of the arms, legs, torso -- as if the parts of your body changed places and your head wasn't where it belonged. . .

"That was how f flew, until I collided with a wall, bounced off it, caught on something, was sent rolling, but managed to grab hold of a projecting rock. . . Someone lay there. Thomas."

She was silent. In the darkness the Pacific roared.

"No, not what you think. He was alive. He sat up at once. I switched on the radio. At that short distance we could communicate perfectly.

" 'Is that you?' I heard him say.

" 'It's me,' I said. A scene from a ridiculous farce, it was so farfetched. Yet that's how it was. We got to our feet.

" 'How do you feel?' I asked.

" 'Fine. And you?'

"This surprised me a little, but I said: " 'Very well, thank you. And everyone at home, too, is in good health.'

"Idiotic, but I thought that he was talking this way to show that he was holding up, you know?"

"I understand."

"When he stood close to me, I saw him as a patch of denser darkness in the light of my shoulder lamp. I ran my hands over his suit -- it was undamaged.

" 'Do you have enough oxygen?' I asked. That was the most important thing.

" 'Who cares?' he said.

"I wondered what to do next. Start up his rocket? That would be too risky. To tell the truth, I wasn't even very pleased. I was afraid -- or, rather, unsure -- it is difficult to explain. The situation was unreal, I sensed something strange in it, what exactly I didn't know, I was not even fully aware of how I felt. Only that I wasn't pleased by this miraculous discovery. I tried to figure out how the rocket could be saved. But that, I thought, was not the most important thing. First I had to see what shape he was in. We stood there, in a night without stars.

" 'What have you been doing all this time?' I asked. This was important. If he had tried to do anything at all, even to take a few mineral samples, that would be a good sign.

" 'Different things,' he said. 'And what have you been doing, Tom?'

" 'What Tom?' I asked and went cold, because Arder had been dead a year, and he knew that very well.

" 'But you're Tom. Aren't you? I recognize your voice.'

"I said nothing; with his gloved hand he touched my suit and said: " 'Nasty, isn't it? Nothing to see, and nothing there. I had pictured it differently. What about you?'

"I thought that he was imagining things in connection with Arder. . . That had happened to more than one of us.

" 'Yes,' I said, 'it isn't too interesting here. Let's go, what do you say, Thomas?'

" 'Go?' He was surprised. 'What are you talking about, Tom?'

"I no longer paid attention to his 'Tom.'

" 'You want to stay here?' I said.

" 'And you don't?'

"He is pulling my leg, I thought, but enough of these stupid jokes.

" 'No,' I said. 'We must get back. Where is your pistol?'

" 'I lost it when I died.'

" 'What?'

" 'But I didn't mind,' he said. 'A dead man doesn't need a pistol.'

" 'Well, well,' I said. 'Come, I'll strap you to me and we'll go.'

" 'Are you crazy, Tom? Go where?'

" 'Back to the Prometheus.'

" 'But it isn't here. . .'

" 'It's out there. Let me strap you up.'

" 'Wait.'

"He pushed me away.

" 'You speak strangely. You're not Tom!'

" 'That's right. I'm Hal.'

" 'You died, too? When?'

"I now saw what was up, and I decided to go along with his game.

" 'Oh,' I said, 'a few days ago. Now let me strap you. . .'

"He didn't want to. We began to banter back and forth, first as if good-naturedly, but then it grew more serious; I tried to take hold of him, but couldn't, in the suit. What was I to do? I couldn't leave him, not even for a moment -- I would never find him a second time. Miracles don't happen twice. And he wanted to remain there, as a dead man. Then, when I thought I had convinced him, when he seemed ready to agree -- and I gave him my gas shooter to hold -- he put his face close to mine, so that I could almost see him through the double gla.s.s, and shouted, 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You tricked me! You're alive!' -- and he shot me."

For some time now I had felt Eri's face pressed to my back. At these last words she jerked, as if a current had pa.s.sed through her, and covered the scar with her hand. We lay in silence for a while.

"It was a very good suit," I said. "It wasn't pierced at all. It bent into me, broke a rib, tore some muscles, but wasn't pierced. I didn't even lose consciousness, but my right arm wouldn't move for a while and a warm sensation told me I was bleeding. For a moment, however, I must have been in a muddle, because when I got up Thomas was gone. I searched for him, groping on all fours, but instead of him I found the shooter. He must have thrown it down immediately after firing. With the shooter I made it back to the ship. They saw me the moment I left the dust cloud. Olaf brought the ship up and they pulled me in. I said that I had not been able to find him. That I had found only the empty rocket, and that the shooter had fallen from my hand and gone off when I stumbled. The suit was double-layered. A piece of the metal lining came away. I have it here, under my rib."

Again, silence and the thunder of a wave, crescendoing, as if gathering itself for a leap across the entire beach, undaunted by the failure of its innumerable predecessors. Breaking, it surged, was dashed, became a soft pulse, closer and quieter, then completely still.

"You flew away. . . ?"

"No. We waited. After two more days the cloud settled, and I went down a second time. Alone. You understand why, apart from all the other reasons?"

"I understand."

"I found him quickly; his suit gleamed in the darkness. He lay at the foot of a pinnacle. His face was not visible, the gla.s.s was frosted on the inside, and when I lifted him up I thought, for a moment, that I was holding an empty suit -- he weighed almost nothing. But it was he. I left him and returned in his rocket. Later, I examined it carefully and found out what had happened. His clock had stopped, an ordinary clock -- he had lost all sense of time. The clock measured hours and days. I fixed it and put it back, so no one would suspect."

I embraced her. My breath stirred her hair. She touched the scar, and suddenly what had been a caress became a question.

"Its shape. . ."

"Peculiar, isn't it? It was sewed up twice, the st.i.tches broke the first time. . . Thurber did the sewing. Because Venturi, our doctor, was dead by then."

"The one who gave you the red book?"

"Yes. How did you know that, Eri -- did I tell you? No, that's impossible."

"You were talking to Olaf, before -- you remember. . ."

"That's right. But imagine your remembering that! Such a small thing. I'm really a swine. I left it on the Prometheus, with everything else."

"You have things there? On Luna?"

"Yes. But it isn't worth dragging them here."

"It is, Hal."

"Darling, it would turn the place into a memorial museum. I hate that sort of thing. If I bring them back, it will only be to burn them. I'll keep a few small things I have, to remember the others by. That stone. . ."

"What stone?"

"I have a lot of stones. There's one from Kereneia, one from Thomas's planetoid -- only don't think that I went around collecting! They simply got struck in the ridges of my boots; Olaf would pry them out and put them away, complete with labels. I couldn't get that idea out of his head. This is not important but. . . I have to tell you. Yes, I ought to, actually, so you won't think that everything there was terrible and that nothing ever happened except death. Try to imagine. . . a fusion of worlds. First, pink, at its lightest, most delicate, an infinity of pink, and within it, penetrating it, a darker pink, and, farther off, a red, almost blue, but much farther off, and all around, a phosph.o.r.escence, weightless, not like a cloud, not like a mist -- different. I have no words for it. The two of us stepped from the rocket and stared. Eri, I don't understand that. Do you know, even now I get a tightness in the throat, it was so beautiful. Just think: there is no life there, no plants, animals, birds, nothing; no eyes to witness it. I am positive that from the creation of the world no one had gazed upon it, that we were the first, Arder and I, and if it hadn't been for the gravimeter's breaking down and our landing to calibrate it, because the quartz shattered and the mercury ran out, then no one, to the end of the world, would have stood there and seen it. Isn't that strange? One had an urge to -- well; I don't know. We couldn't leave. We forgot why we had landed, we stood just like that, stood and stared."

"What was it, Hal?"

"I don't know. When we returned and told the others, Biel wanted to go, but it wasn't possible. Not enough power in reserve. We'd taken plenty of shots, but nothing came out. In the photographs it looked like pink milk with purple palisades, and Biel went on about the chemiluminescence of the silicon hydride vapors; I doubt that he believed that, but in despair, since he would never be able to investigate it, he tried to come up with some explanation. It was like. . . like nothing. We have no referents. No a.n.a.logies. It possessed immense depth, but was not a landscape. Those different shades, as I said, more and more distant and dark, until your eyes swam. Motion -- none, really. It floated and stood still. It changed, as if it breathed, yet remained the same; perhaps the most important thing was its enormity. As if beyond this cruel black eternity there existed another eternity, another infinity, so concentrated and mighty, so bright, that if you closed your eyes you would no longer believe in it. When we looked at each other . . . you'd have to know Arder. I'll show you his photograph. There was a man -- bigger than I am, he looked like he could walk through any wall without even noticing. Always spoke slowly. You heard about that. . . hole on Kereneia?"

"Yes."

"He got stuck there, in the rock, hot mud was boiling under him, at any moment it could come gushing up through the tube where he was trapped, and he said, 'Hal, hold on. I'll take one more look around. Perhaps if I remove the bottle -- no. It won't, my straps are tangled. But hold on.' And so on. You would have thought that he was talking on the telephone, from his hotel room. It was not a pose, he was like that. The most level-headed among us: always weighing. That was why he flew with me afterward, not with Olaf, who was his friend -- but you heard about that."

"Yes."

"So . . . Arder. When I looked at him there, he had tears in his eyes. Tom Arder. He wasn't ashamed of them, either, not then or later. Whenever we talked about it -- and we did from time to time, coming back to it -- the others would get angry. They thought we were putting on an act, pretending or something. Because we became so. . . beatific. Funny, isn't it? Anyway. We looked at each other and the same thought entered our minds, even though we did not know if we would be able to calibrate the gravimeter properly -- our only chance of finding the Prometheus. Our thought was this, that it had been worth it. Just to be able to stand there and behold that majesty."

"You were standing on a hill?"

"I don't know. Eri, it was a different kind of perspective. We looked as if from a great height, yet it was not an elevation. Wait a moment. Have you seen the Grand Canyon, in Colorado?

"I have."

"Imagine that that canyon is a thousand times larger. Or a million. That it is made of red and pink gold, almost completely transparent, that through it you can see all the strata, geological folds, anticlines and synclines; that all this is weightless, floating and seeming to smile at you. No, that doesn't do it. Darling, both Arder and I tried terribly hard to tell the others, but we failed. The stone is from there. . . Arder picked it up for luck. He always had it with him. He had it with him on Kereneia. Kept it in a box for vitamin pills. When it began to crumble he wrapped it in cotton. Later -- after I returned without him -- I found the stone under the bed of his cabin. It must have fallen there. I think Olaf believed that that was the reason, but he didn't dare say this, it was too stupid. . . What could a stone have to do with the wire that caused the failure of Ardor's radio. . . ?"

EIGHT.

In the meantime Olaf made no sign. I was uneasy, then guilty. Afraid that he had done something crazy. Because he was still alone, and more so, even, than I had been. I did not want to involve Eri in unpredictable events, and that would happen if I began the search myself; therefore, I decided to go to Thurber first. I wasn't sure I was going to ask him for advice -- I only wanted to see him. I had got the address from Olaf; Thurber was at the university center in Malleolan. I wired him that I was coming, and parted with Eri for the first time. Over the last few days she had been reticent and nervous; I attributed this to concern for Olaf. I promised I'd be back as soon as I could, probably in two days, and that I wouldn't do anything until I had consulted her.

Eri drove me to Houl, where I caught a nonstop ulder. The beaches of the Pacific were deserted now, on account of the approaching autumn storms; the colorful crowds of young people had vanished from the local resorts, so I was not surprised to be practically the only pa.s.senger in the silver projectile. The flight, in clouds that made everything unreal, lasted almost an hour and was over at dusk. The city rose through the gathering darkness like a many-colored fire -- the tallest buildings, goblet-shaped, blazed in the midst like thin, motionless flames, their outlines, against white clouds, shaped like giant b.u.t.terflies joined by arches at the highest levels; the lower levels of the streets, running into one another, made twisting, colored rivers. It might have been the mist, or an effect of the gla.s.slike construction material, but the city looked, from above, like a cl.u.s.ter of concentric gems, a crystal island, jewel-studded, rising up from the ocean, whose mirror surface repeated more and more faintly the shining tiers, right to the last, now barely visible, as if beneath the city lay its incandescent ruby skeleton. It was hard to believe that this fairy tale of mingled flame and color was the home of several million people.

The university complex stood outside the city. My ulder landed in a huge park, on a concrete platform. Only the pale silver glow across the sky, above the blank wall of trees, showed the proximity of the city. A long avenue led to the main building, which was dark, as though deserted.

No sooner did I open the huge door than the interior was flooded with light. I found myself in a vaulted hall with pale blue tiles. A network of soundproof pa.s.sages took me to a corridor, plain and austere -- I opened one door, then another, but the rooms were all empty, as if the people had departed long ago. I went upstairs, up a flight of real stairs. There must have been an elevator somewhere, but I didn't feel like looking for it. Besides, stairs that didn't move were a novelty. At the top, heading in both directions, was another corridor with vacant rooms; on the door of one I saw a small piece of paper with the words "In here, Bregg." I knocked, and heard the voice of Thurber.

I went in. He was sitting hunched in the light of a low-hanging lamp. Behind him was the darkness of a wall-to-wall window. The desk at which he worked was littered with papers and books -- real books -- and on another, smaller, desk nearby lay entire handfuls of those crystal "grains of corn" plus various pieces of equipment. In front of him he had a stack of paper and with a pen -- a fountain pen! -- he was making notes in the margins.

"Have a seat," he said, not looking up. "I'll be done in a minute."

I took a low chair by the desk but immediately moved it to the side, because the light made a blur of his face and I wanted to get a good look at him.

He worked in his characteristic way, slowly, frowning into the glare of the lamp. This was one of the simplest rooms I had seen so far, with dull walls, an old door, no decoration, and none of that tiresome gold. On either side of the door was a square, blank screen, and the wall near the window was filled with metal cabinets; rolls of maps or technical drawings leaned against one of these -- that was all. I considered Thurber. Bald, solidly built, heavy; he was writing, now and then would wipe his eyes with the edge of his hand. They were always watering. Gimma (who liked to reveal others' secrets, especially those that a person tried hardest to keep hidden) once told me that Thurber was afraid of going blind. Which explained why he was always the first to turn in when we changed acceleration, and why -- in later years -- he let others do things for him that he had once insisted on doing himself.

He gathered the papers with both hands, tapped the desk with them to get the edges even, then put them in a briefcase, closed it, and only then, lowering his large hands with those thick fingers that looked as though they had difficulty bending, said: "Welcome, Hal. How goes it?"

"I'm not complaining. Are you. . . alone?"