The Star (26 page)
We’d resigned ourselves to waiting, with what patience we could muster, until our Earth leave was due in six months’ time, when we had an unexpected stroke of luck. Less than half our tour of duty had passed when the head of the transport section suddenly announced that he was going outside with a butterfly net to catch meteors. He didn’t become violent, but had to be shipped hastily back to Earth. I took over his job on a temporary basis and now had—in theory at least—the freedom of space.
There were ten of the little low-powered rocket scooters under my proud command, as well as four of the larger interstation shuttles used to ferry stores and personnel from orbit to orbit. I couldn’t hope to borrow one of
those
, but after several weeks of careful organising I was able to carry out the plan I’d conceived some two micro-seconds after being told I was now head of transport.
There’s no need to tell how I juggled duty lists, cooked logs and fuel registers, and persuaded my colleagues to cover up for me. All that matters is that, about once a week, I would climb into my personal space suit, strap myself to the spidery framework of a Mark III Scooter, and drift away from the station at minimum power. When I was well clear, I’d go over to full throttle, and the tiny rocket motor would hustle me across the nine-hundred-mile gap to the observatory.
The trip took about thirty minutes, and the navigational requirements were elementary. I could see where I was going and where I’d come from, yet I don’t mind admitting that I often felt—well, a trifle lonely—around the mid-point of the journey. There was no other solid matter within almost five hundred miles—and it looked an awfully long way down to Earth. It was a great help, at such moments, to tune the suit radio to the general service band, and to listen to all the back-chat between ships and stations.
At midflight I’d have to spin the scooter around and start braking, and ten minutes later the observatory would be close enough for its details to be visible to the unaided eye. Very shortly after that I’d drift up to a small, plastic pressure bubble that was in the process of being fitted out as a spectroscopic laboratory—and there would be Julie, waiting on the other side of the air lock…
I won’t pretend that we confined our discussions to the latest results in astrophysics, or the progress of the satellite construction schedule. Few things, indeed, were further from our thoughts; and the journey home always seemed to flash by at a quite astonishing speed.
It was around mid-orbit on one of those homeward trips that the radar started to flash on my little control panel. There was something large at extreme range, and it was coming in fast. A meteor, I told myself—maybe-even a small asteroid. Anything giving such a signal should be visible to the eye: I read off the bearings and searched the star fields in the indicated direction. The thought of a collision never even crossed my mind; space is so inconceivably vast that I was thousands of times safer than a man crossing a busy street on Earth.
There it was—a bright and steadily growing star near the foot of Orion. It already outshone Rigel, and seconds later it was not merely a star, but had begun to show a visible disc. Now it was moving as fast as I could turn my head; it grew to a tiny misshaped moon, then dwindled and shrank with that same silent, inexorable speed.
I suppose I had a clear view of it for perhaps half a second, and that half-second has haunted me all my life. The—object—had already vanished by the time I thought of checking the radar again, so I had no way of gauging how close it came, and hence how large it really was. It could have been a small object a hundred feet away—or a very large one, ten miles off. There is no sense of perspective in space, and unless you know what you are looking at, you cannot judge its distance.
Of course, it
could
have been a very large and oddly shaped meteor; I can never be sure that my eyes, straining to grasp the details of so swiftly moving an object, were not hopelessly deceived. I may have imagined that I saw that broken, crumpled prow, and the cluster of dark ports like the sightless sockets of a skull. Of one thing only was I certain, even in that brief and fragmentary vision. If it
was
a ship, it was not one of ours. Its shape was utterly alien, and it was very, very old.
It may be that the greatest discovery of all time slipped from my grasp as I struggled with my thoughts midway between the two space stations. But I had no measurements of speed or direction; whatever it was that I had glimpsed was now lost beyond recapture in the wastes of the solar system.
What should I have done? No one would ever have believed me, for I would have had no proof. Had I made a report, there would have been endless trouble. I should have become the laughingstock of the Space Service, would have been reprimanded for misuse of equipment—and would certainly not have been able to see Julie again. And to me, at that age, nothing else was as important. If you’ve been in love yourself, you’ll understand; if not, then no explanation is any use.
So I said nothing. To some other man (how many centuries hence?) will go the fame for proving that we were not the first-born of the children of the sun. Whatever it may be that is circling out there on its eternal orbit can wait, as it has waited ages already.
Yet I sometimes wonder. Would I have made a report, after all—had I known that Julie was going to marry someone else?
The Call of the Stars
Down there on Earth the twentieth century is dying. As I look across at the shadowed globe blocking the stars, I can see the lights of a hundred sleepless cities, and there are moments when I wish that I could be among the crowds now surging and singing in the streets of London, Capetown, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Madrid… Yes, I can see them all at a single glance, burning like fireflies against the darkened planet. The line of midnight is now bisecting Europe: in the eastern Mediterranean a tiny, brilliant star is pulsing as some exuberant pleasure ship waves her searchlights to the sky. I think she is deliberately aiming at us; for the past few minutes the flashes have been quite regular and startlingly bright. Presently I’ll call the communications centre and find out who she is, so that I can radio back our own greetings.
Passing into history now, receding forever down the stream of time, is the most incredible hundred years the world has ever seen. It opened with the conquest of the air, saw at its mid-point the unlocking of the atom—and now ends with the bridging of space.
(For the past five minutes I’ve been wondering what’s happening to Nairobi; now I realise that they are putting on a mammoth fireworks display. Chemically fuelled rockets may be obsolete out here—but they’re still using lots of them down on Earth tonight.)
The end of a century—and the end of a millennium. What will the hundred years that begin with two and zero bring? The planets, of course; floating there in space, only a mile away, are the ships of the first Martian expedition. For two years I have watched them grow, assembled piece by piece, as the space station itself was built by the men I worked with a generation ago.
Those ten ships are ready now, with all their crews aboard, waiting for the final instrument check and the signal for departure. Before the first day of the new century has passed its noon, they will be tearing free from the reins of Earth, to head out toward the strange world that may one day be man’s second home.
As I look at the brave little fleet that is now preparing to challenge infinity, my mind goes back forty years, to the days when the first satellites were launched and the moon still seemed very far away. And I remember—indeed, I have never forgotten—my father’s fight to keep me down on Earth.
There were not many weapons he had failed to use. Ridicule had been the first: ‘Of course they can do it,’ he had sneered, ‘but what’s the point? Who wants to go out into space while there’s so much to be done here on Earth? There’s not a single planet in the solar system where men can live. The moon’s a burnt-out slag heap, and everywhere else is even worse.
This
is where we were meant to live.’
Even then (I must have been eighteen or so at the time) I could tangle him up in points of logic. I can remember answering, ‘How do you know where we were meant to live, Dad? After all, we were in the sea for about a billion years before we decided to tackle the land. Now we’re making the next big jump: I don’t know where it will lead—nor did that first fish when it crawled up on the beach, and started to sniff the air.’
So when he couldn’t outargue me, he had tried subtler pressures. He was always talking about the dangers of space travel, and the short working life of anyone foolish enough to get involved in rocketry. At that time, people were still scared of meteors and cosmic rays; like the ‘Here Be Dragons’ of the old map makers, they were the mythical monsters on the still-blank celestial charts. But they didn’t worry me; if anything, they added the spice of danger to my dreams.
While I was going through college, Father was comparatively quiet. My training would be valuable whatever profession I took up in later life, so he could not complain—though he occasionally grumbled about the money I wasted buying all the books and magazines on astronautics that I could find. My college record was good, which naturally pleased him; perhaps he did not realise that it would also help me to get my way.
All through my final year I had avoided talking of my plans. I had even given the impression (though I am sorry for that now) that I had abandoned my dream of going into space. Without saying anything to him, I put in my application to Astrotech, and was accepted as soon as I had graduated.
The storm broke when that long blue envelope with the embossed heading ‘Institute of Astronautical Technology’ dropped into the mailbox. I was accused of deceit and ingratitude, and I do not think I ever forgave my father for destroying the pleasure I should have felt at being chosen for the most exclusive—and most glamorous—apprenticeship the world has ever known.
The vacations were an ordeal; had it not been for Mother’s sake, I do not think I would have gone home more than once a year, and I always left again as quickly as I could. I had hoped that Father would mellow as my training progressed and as he accepted the inevitable, but he never did.
Then had come that stiff and awkward parting at the spaceport, with the rain streaming down from leaden skies and beating against the smooth walls of the ship that seemed so eagerly waiting to climb into the eternal sunlight beyond the reach of storms. I know now what it cost my father to watch the machine he hated swallow up his only son: for I understand many things today that were hidden from me then.
He knew, even as we parted at the ship, that he would never see me again. Yet his old, stubborn pride kept him from saying the only words that might have held me back. I knew that he was ill, but how ill, he had told no one. That was the only weapon he had not used against me, and I respect him for it.
Would I have stayed had I known? It is even more futile to speculate about the unchangeable past than the unforeseeable future; all I can say now is that I am glad I never had to make the choice. At the end he let me go; he gave up his fight against my ambition, and a little while later his fight with Death.
So I said goodbye to Earth, and to the father who loved me but knew no way to say it. He lies down there on the planet I can cover with my hand; how strange it is to think that of the countless billion human beings whose blood runs in my veins, I was the very first to leave his native world…
The new day is breaking over Asia; a hairline of fire is rimming the eastern edge of Earth. Soon it will grow into a burning crescent as the sun comes up out of the Pacific—yet Europe is preparing for sleep, except for those revellers who will stay up to greet the dawn.
And now, over there by the flagship, the ferry rocket is coming back for the last visitors from the station. Here comes the message I have been waiting for:
CAPTAIN STEVENS PRESENTS HIS COMPLIMENTS TO THE STATION COMMANDER. BLAST-OFF WILL BE IN NINETY MINUTES; HE WILL BE GLAD TO SEE YOU ABOARD NOW
.
Well, Father, now I know how you felt: time has gone full circle. Yet I hope that I have learned from the mistakes we both made, long ago. I shall remember you when I go over there to the flagship
Starfire
and say goodbye to the grandson you never knew.
First published in the
Dundee Sunday Telegraph
, 5th September 1957
Collected in
Tales of Ten Worlds
The conversation had come around to death rays again, and some carping critic was poking fun at the old science fiction magazines whose covers so often displayed multicoloured beams creating havoc in all directions. ‘Such an elementary scientific blunder,’ he snorted. ‘All the visible radiations are harmless—we wouldn’t be alive if they weren’t. So anybody should have known that the green rays and purple rays and scots-tartan rays were a lot of nonsense. You might even make a rule—if you could see a ray, it couldn’t hurt you.’
‘An interesting theory,’ said Harry Purvis, ‘but not in accordance with the facts. The only death ray that I, personally, have ever come across was perfectly visible.’
‘Indeed? What colour was it?’
‘I’ll come round to that in a minute—if you want me to. But talking of rounds…’
We caught Charlie Willis before he could sneak out of the bar, and practised a little jujitsu on him until all the glasses were filled again. Then that curious, suspenseful silence descended over the White Hart that all the regulars recognise as the prelude to one of Harry Purvis’s improbable stories.
‘Edgar and Mary Burton were a somewhat ill-assorted pair, and none of their friends could explain why they had married. Perhaps the cynical explanation was the correct one; Edgar was almost twenty years older than his wife, and had made a quarter of a million on the stock exchange before retiring at an unusually early age. He had set himself this financial target, had worked hard to attain it—and when his bank balance had reached the desired figure had instantly lost all ambition. From now on he intended to live the life of a country gentleman, and to devote his declining years to his one absorbing hobby—astronomy.
