Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (31 page)

“You rather stay out here?” Dave asks.

“Crazies,” says a different voice from Luna. “
Sunbird
, I’m Murti, the health person here. I think what we have to fear most is the meningitis-influenza complex, they mutate so readily. Does your Dr. Lorimer have any suggestions?”

“Roger, I’ll put him on,” says Dave. “But as to your first point, madam, I want to inform you that at time of takeoff the incidence of rape in the United States space cadre was zero point zero. I guarantee the conduct of my crew, provided you can control yours. Here is Dr. Lorimer.”

But Lorimer cannot of course tell them anything useful. They discuss the men’s polio shots, which luckily have used killed virus, and various childhood diseases which still seem to be around. He does not mention their epidemic.

“Luna, we’re going to try it,” Judy declares. “We couldn’t live with ourselves. Now let’s get the course figured before they get any farther away.”

From there on there is no rest on
Sunbird
while they set up and refigure and rerun the computations for the envelope of possible intersecting trajectories. The
Gloria
’s drive, they learn, is indeed low-thrust, although capable of sustained operation.
Sunbird
will have to get most of the way to the rendezvous on her own if they can cancel their outward velocity.

The tension breaks once during the long session, when Luna calls
Gloria
to warn Connie to be sure the female crew members wear concealing garments at all times if the men came aboard.

“Not suit-liners, Connie, they’re much too tight.” It is the older woman, Myda. Bud chuckles.

“Your light sleepers, I think. And when the men unsuit, your Andy is the only one who should help them. You others stay away. The same for all body functions and sleeping. This is very important, Connie, you’ll have to watch it the whole way home. There are a great many complicated taboos. I’m putting an instruction list on the bleeper, is your receiver working?”

“Da, we used it for France’s black-hole paper.”

“Good. Tell Judy to stand by. Now listen, Connie, listen carefully. Tell Andy he has to read it all. I repeat,
he
has to read every word. Did you hear that?”

“Ah, dinko,” Connie answers. “I understand, Myda. He will.”

“I think we just lost the ball game, fellas,” Bud laments. “Old mother Myda took it all away.”

Even Dave laughs. But later when the modulated squeal that is a whole text comes through the speaker, he frowns again. “There goes the good stuff.”

The last factors are cranked in; the revised program spins, and Luna confirms them. “We have a payout, Dave,” Lorimer reports. “It’s tight, but there are at least two viable options. Provided the main jets are fully functional.”

“We’re going EVA to check.”

That is exhausting; they find a warp in the deflector housing of the port engines and spend four sweating hours trying to wrestle it back. It is only Lorimer’s third sight of open space, but he is soon too tired to care.

“Best we can do,” Dave pants finally. “We’ll have to compensate in the psychic mode.”

“You can do it, Dave-o,” says Bud. “Hey, I gotta change those suit radios, don’t let me forget.”

In the psychic mode . . . Lorimer surfaces back to his real self, cocooned in Gloria’s big cluttered cabin, seeing Connie’s living face. “It must be hours, how long has he been dreaming?”

“About two minutes,” Connie smiles.

“I was thinking of the first time I saw you.”

“Oh, yes. We’ll never forget that, ever.”

Nor will he. . . . He lets it unroll again in his head. The interminable hours after the first long burn, which has sent
Sunbird
yawing so they all have to gulp nausea pills. Judy’s breathless voice reading down their approach: “Oh, very good, four hundred thousand . . . Oh, great,
Sunbird
, you’re almost three, you’re going to break a hundred for sure—” Dave has done it, the big one.

Lorimer’s probe is useless in the yaw, it isn’t until they stabilize enough for the final burst that they can see the strange blip bloom and vanish in the slot. Converging, hopefully, on a theoretical near-intersection point.

“Here goes everything.”

The final burn changes the yaw into a sickening tumble with the star field looping past the glass. The pills are no more use, and the fuel feed to the attitude jets goes sour. They are all vomiting before they manage to hand-pump the last of the fuel and slow the tumble.

“That’s it,
Gloria
. Come and get us. Lights on, Bud. Let’s get those suits up.”

Fighting nausea, they go through the laborious routine in the fouled cabin. Suddenly Judy’s voice sings out, “We see you,
Sunbird!
We see your light! Can’t you see us?”

“No time,” Dave says. But Bud, half-suited, points at the window. “Fellas, oh, hey, look at that.”

Lorimer stares, thinks he sees a faint spark between the whirling stars before he has to retch.

“Father, we thank you,” says Dave quietly. “All right, move it on, Doc. Packs.”

The effort of getting themselves plus the propulsion units and a couple of cargo nets out of the rolling ship drives everything else out of mind. It isn’t until they are floating linked together and stabilized by Dave’s hand jet that Lorimer has time to look.

The sun blanks out their left. A few meters below them
Sunbird
tumbles empty, looking absurdly small. Ahead of them, infinitely far away, is a point too blurred and yellow to be a star. It creeps:
Gloria
, on her approach tangent.

“Can you start,
Sunbird?
” says Judy in their helmets. “We don’t want to brake anymore on account of our exhaust. We estimate fifty kay in an hour, we’re coming out on a line.”

“Roger. Give me your jet, Doc.”

“Good-bye,
Sunbird
,” says Bud. “Plenty of lead, Dave-o.”

Lorimer finds it restful in a childish way, being towed across the abyss tied to the two big men. He has total confidence in Dave, he never considers the possibility that they will miss, sail by, and be lost. Does Dave feel contempt? Lorimer wonders; that banked-up silence, is it partly contempt for those who can manipulate only symbols, who have no mastery of matter? . . . He concentrates on mastering his stomach.

It is a long, dark trip.
Sunbird
shrinks to a twinkling light, slowly accelerating on the spiral course that will end her ultimately in the sun with their precious records that are three hundred years obsolete. With, also, the packet of photos and letters that Lorimer has twice put in his suit-pouch and twice taken out. Now and then he catches sight of
Gloria
, growing from a blur to an incomprehensible tangle of lighted crescents.

“Woo-ee, it’s big,” Bud says. “No wonder they can’t accelerate, that thing is a flying trailer park. It’d break up.”

“It’s a spaceship. Got those nets tight, Doc?”

Judy’s voice suddenly fills their helmets. “I see your lights! Can you see me? Will you have enough left to brake at all?”

“Affirmative to both,
Gloria
,” says Dave.

At that moment Lorimer is turned slowly forward again and he sees—will see it forever: the alien ship in the star field and on its dark side the tiny lights that are women in the stars, waiting for them. Three—no, four; one suit-light is way out, moving. If that is a tether, it must be over a kilometer.

“Hello, I’m Judy Dakar!” The voice is close. “Oh, mother, you’re big! Are you all right? How’s your air?”

“No problem.”

They are in fact stale and steaming wet; too much adrenaline. Dave uses the jets again and suddenly she is growing, is coming right at them, a silvery spider on a trailing thread. Her suit looks trim and flexible; it is mirror-bright, and the pack is quite small. Marvels of the future, Lorimer thinks; Paragraph One.

“You made it, you made it! Here, tie in. Brake!”

“There ought to be some historic words,” Bud murmurs. “If she gives us a chance.”

“Hello, Judy,” says Dave calmly. “Thanks for coming.”

“Contact!” She blasts their ears. “Haul us in, Andy! Brake, brake—the exhaust is back there!”

And they are grabbed hard, deflected into a great arc toward the ship. Dave uses up the last jet. The line loops.

“Don’t jerk it,” Judy cries. “Oh, I’m
sorry
.” She is clinging on them like a gibbon, Lorimer can see her eyes, her excited mouth. Incredible. “Watch out, it’s slack.”

“Teach me, honey,” says Andy’s baritone. Lorimer twists and sees him far back at the end of a heavy tether, hauling them smoothly in. Bud offers to help, is refused. “Just hang loose, please,” a matronly voice tells them. It is obvious Andy has done this before. They come in spinning slowly, like space fish. Lorimer finds he can no longer pick out the twinkle that is
Sunbird
. When he is swung back,
Gloria
has changed to a disorderly cluster of bulbs and spokes around a big central cylinder. He can see pods and miscellaneous equipment stowed all over her. Not like science fiction.

Andy is paying the line into a floating coil. Another figure floats beside him. They are both quite short, Lorimer realizes as they near.

“Catch the cable,” Andy tells them. There is a busy moment of shifting inertial drag.

“Welcome to
Gloria
, Major Davis, Captain Geirr, Dr. Lorimer. I’m Lady Blue Parks. I think you’ll like to get inside as soon as possible. If you feel like climbing go right ahead, we’ll pull all this in later.”

“We appreciate it, ma’am.”

They start hand-over-hand along the catenary of the main tether. It has a good rough grip. Judy coasts up to peer at them, smiling broadly, towing the coil. A taller figure waits by the ship’s open airlock.

“Hello, I’m Connie. I think we can cycle in two at a time. Will you come with me, Major Davis?”

It is like an emergency on a plane, Lorimer thinks, as Dave follows her in. Being ordered about by supernaturally polite little girls.

“Space-going stews,” Bud nudges him. “How ‘bout that?” His face is sprouting sweat. Lorimer tells him to go next, his own LSP has less load.

Bud goes in with Andy. The woman named Lady Blue waits beside Lorimer while Judy scrambles on the hull securing their cargo nets. She doesn’t seem to have magnetic soles; perhaps ferrous metals aren’t used in space now. When Judy begins hauling in the main tether on a simple hand winch, Lady Blue looks at it critically.

“I used to make those,” she says to Lorimer. What he can see of her features looks compressed, her dark eyes twinkle. He has the impression she is part black.

“I ought to get over and clean that aft antenna.” Judy floats up. “Later,” says Lady Blue. They both smile at Lorimer. Then the hatch opens, and he and Lady Blue go in. When the toggles seat, there comes a rising scream of air and Lorimer’s suit collapses.

“Can I help you?” She has opened her faceplate, the voice is rich and live. Eagerly Lorimer catches the latches in his clumsy gloves and lets her lift the helmet off. His first breath surprises him, it takes an instant to identify the gas as fresh air. Then the inner hatch opens, letting in greenish light. She waves him through. He swims into a short tunnel. Voices are coming from around the corner ahead. His hand finds a grip and he stops, feeling his heart shudder in his chest.

When he turns that corner the world he knows will be dead. Gone, rolled up, blown away forever with
Sunbird
. He will be irrevocably in the future. A man from the past, a time traveler. In the future . . .

He pulls himself around the bend.

The future is a vast bright cylinder, its whole inner surface festooned with unidentifiable objects, fronds of green. In front of him floats an odd tableau: Bud and Dave, helmets off, looking enormous in their bulky white suits and packs. A few meters away hang two bareheaded figures in shiny suits and a dark-haired girl in flowing pink pajamas.

They are all simply staring at the two men, their eyes and mouths open in identical expressions of pleased wonder. The face that has to be Andy’s is grinning openmouthed like a kid at the zoo. He is a surprisingly young boy, Lorimer sees, in spite of his deep voice; blond, downy-cheeked, compactly muscular. Lorimer finds he can scarcely bear to look at the pink woman, can’t tell if she really is surpassingly beautiful or plain. The taller suited woman has a shiny, ordinary face.

From overhead bursts an extraordinary sound which he finally recognizes as a chicken cackling. Lady Blue pushes past him.

“All right, Andy, Connie, stop staring and help them get their suits off. Judy, Luna is just as eager to hear about this as we are.”

The tableau jumps to life. Afterward Lorimer can recall mostly eyes, bright curious eyes tugging his boots, smiling eyes upside down over his pack—and always that light, ready laughter. Andy is left alone to help them peel down, blinking at the fittings which Lorimer still finds embarrassing. He seems easy and nimble in his own half-open suit. Lorimer struggles out of the last lacings, thinking, a boy! A boy and four women orbiting the sun, flying their big junky ships to Mars. Should he feel humiliated? He only feels grateful, accepting a short robe and a bulb of tea somebody—Connie?—gives him.

The suited Judy comes in with their nets. The men follow Andy along another passage, Bud and Dave clutching at the small robes. Andy stops by a hatch.

“This greenhouse is for you, it’s your toilet. Three’s a lot, but you have full sun.”

Inside is a brilliant jungle, foliage everywhere, glittering water droplets, rustling leaves. Something whirs away—a grasshopper.

“You crank that handle.” Andy points to a seat on a large cross-duct. “The piston rams the gravel and waste into a compost process, and it ends up in the soil core. That vetch is a heavy nitrogen user and a great oxidator. We pump CO2 in and oxy out. It’s a real Woolagong.”

He watches critically while Bud tries out the facility.

“What’s a Woolagong?” asks Lorimer dazedly.

“Oh, she’s one of our inventors. Some of her stuff is weird. When we have a pluggy-looking thing that works, we call it a Woolagong.” He grins. “The chickens eat the seeds and the hoppers, see, and the hoppers and iguanas eat the leaves. When a greenhouse is going darkside, we turn them in to harvest. With this much light I think we could keep a goat, don’t you? You didn’t have any life at all on your ship, true?”