The Worlds of Edmond Hamilton Page 20

  And he was sorry, when the day came. The others of the staff were already out in the docking lock in the rim, waiting to greet the replacements from the ferry. Kieran, hating to leave, lagged behind. Then, realizing it would be churlish not to meet this young Frenchman who was replacing him, he hurried along the corridor in the big spoke when he saw the ferry coming in.

  He was two-thirds of the way along the spoke to the rim when it happened. There was a tremendous crash that flung him violently from his feet. He felt a coldness, instant and terrible.

  He was dying.

  He was dead.

  The ferry had been coming in on a perfectly normal approach when the tiny something went wrong, in the ship or in the judgment of the pilot. Its drive-rockets suddenly blasted on full, it heeled over sharply, it smashed through the big starboard spoke like a knife through butter.

  Wheel Five staggered, rocked, and floundered. The automatic safety bulkheads had all closed, and the big spoke--Section T2--was the only section to blow its air, and Kieran was the only man caught in it. The alarms went off, and while the wreckage of the ferry, with three dead men in it, was still drifting close by, everyone in the Wheel was in his pressure-suit and emergency measures were in full force.

  * * * * *

  Within thirty minutes it became evident that the Wheel was going to survive this accident. It was edging slowly out of orbit from the impetus of the blow, and in the present weakened state of the construction its small corrective rockets could not be used to stop the drift. But Meloni, the UNRC captain commanding, had got first reports from his damage-control teams, and it did not look too bad. He fired off peremptory demands for the repair materials he would need, and was assured by UNRC headquarters at Mexico City that the ferries would be loaded and on their way as soon as possible.

  Meloni was just beginning to relax a little when a young officer brought up a minor but vexing problem. Lieutenant Vinson had headed the small party sent out to recover the bodies of the four dead men. In their pressure-suits they had been pawing through the tangled wreckage for some time, and young Vinson was tired when he made his report.

  "We have all four alongside, sir. The three men in the ferry were pretty badly mangled in the crash. Kieran wasn't physically wounded, but died from space-asphyxiation."

  The captain stared at him. "Alongside? Why didn't you bring them in? They'll go back in one of the ferries to Earth for burial."

  "But--" Vinson started to protest.

  Meloni interrupted sharply. "You need to learn a few things about morale, Lieutenant. You think it's going to do morale here any good to have four dead men floating alongside where everyone can see them? Fetch them in and store them in one of the holds."

  Vinson, sweating and unhappy now, had visions of a black mark on his record, and determined to make his point.

  "But about Kieran, sir--he was only frozen. Suppose there was a chance to bring him back?"

  "Bring him back? What the devil are you talking about?"

  Vinson said, "I read they're trying to find some way of restoring a man that gets space-frozen. Some scientists down at Delhi University. If they succeeded, and if we had Kieran still intact in space--"

  "Oh, hell, that's just a scientific pipe-dream, they'll never find a way to do that," Meloni said. "It's all just theory."

  "Yes, sir," said Vinson, hanging his head.

  "We've got trouble enough here without you bringing up ideas like this," the captain continued angrily. "Get out of here."

  Vinson was now completely crushed. "Yes, sir. I'll bring the bodies in."

  * * * * *

  He went out. Meloni stared at the door, and began to think. A commanding officer had to be careful, or he could get skinned alive. If, by some remote chance, this Delhi idea ever succeeded, he, Meloni, would be in for it for having Kieran buried. He strode to the door and flung it open, mentally cursing the young snotty who had had to bring this up.

  "Vinson!" he shouted.

  The lieutenant turned back, startled. "Yes, sir?"

  "Hold Kieran's body outside. I'll check on this with Mexico City."

  "Yes, sir."

  Still angry, Meloni shot a message to Personnel at Mexico City. That done, he forgot about it. The buck had been passed, let the boys sitting on their backsides down on Earth handle it.

  Colonel Hausman, second in command of Personnel Division of UNRC, was the man to whom Meloni's message went. He snorted loudly when he read it. And later, when he went in to report to Garces, the brigadier commanding the Division, he took the message with him.

  "Meloni must be pretty badly rattled by the crash," he said. "Look at this."

  Garces read the message, then looked up. "Anything to this? The Delhi experiments, I mean?"

  Hausman had taken care to brief himself on that point and was able to answer emphatically.

  "Damned little. Those chaps in Delhi have been playing around freezing insects and thawing them out, and they think the process might be developed someday to where it could revive frozen spacemen. It's an iffy idea. I'll burn Meloni's backside off for bringing it up at a time like this."

  Garces, after a moment, shook his head. "No, wait. Let me think about this."

  He looked speculatively out of the window for a few moments. Then he said,

  "Message Meloni that this one chap's body--what's his name, Kieran?--is to be preserved in space against a chance of future revival."

  Hausman nearly blotted his copybook by exclaiming, "For God's sake--" He choked that down in time and said, "But it could be centuries before a revival process is perfected, if it ever is."

  Garces nodded. "I know. But you're missing a psychological point that could be valuable to UNRC. This Kieran has relatives, doesn't he?"

  Hausman nodded. "A widowed mother and a sister. His father's been dead a long time. No wife or children."

  Garces said, "If we tell them he's dead, frozen in space and then buried, it's all over with. Won't those people feel a lot better if we tell them that he's apparently dead, but might be brought back when a revival-technique is perfected in the future?"

  "I suppose they'd feel better about it," Hausman conceded. "But I don't see--"

  Garces shrugged. "Simple. We're only really beginning in space, you know. As we go on, UNRC is going to lose a number of men, space-struck just like Kieran. A howl will go up about our casualty lists, it always does. But if we can say that they're only frozen until such time as revival technique is achieved, everyone will feel better about it."

  "I suppose public relations are important--" Hausman began to say, and Garces nodded quickly.

  "They are. See that this is done, when you go up to confer with Meloni. Make sure that it gets onto the video networks, I want everyone to see it."

  Later, with many cameras and millions of people watching, Kieran's body, in a pressure-suit, was ceremoniously taken to a selected position where it would orbit the Moon. All suggestions of the funerary were carefully avoided. The space-struck man--nobody at all referred to him as "dead"--would remain in this position until a revival process was perfected.

  "Until forever," thought Hausman, watching sourly. "I suppose Garces is right. But they'll have a whole graveyard here, as time goes on."

  As time went on, they did.

  2

  In his dreams, a soft voice whispered.

  He did not know what it was telling him, except that it was important. He was hardly aware of its coming, the times it came. There would be the quiet murmuring, and something in him seemed to hear and understand, and then the murmur faded away and there was nothing but the dreams again.

  But were they dreams? Nothing had form or meaning. Light, darkness, sound, pain and not-pain, flowed over him. Flowed over--who? Who was he? He did not even know that. He did not care.

  But he came to care, the question vaguely nagged him. He should try to remember. There was more than dreams and the whispering voice. There was--what? If he had one real thing to cling to, to
put his feet on and climb back from-- One thing like his name.

  He had no name. He was no one. Sleep and forget it. Sleep and dream and listen--

  "Kieran."

  It went across his brain like a shattering bolt of lightning, that word. He did not know what the word was or what it meant but it found an echo somewhere and his brain screamed it.

  "Kieran!"

  Not his brain alone, his voice was gasping it, harshly and croakingly, his lungs seeming on fire as they expelled the word.

  He was shaking. He had a body that could shake, that could feel pain, that was feeling pain now. He tried to move, to break the nightmare, to get back again to the vague dreams, and the soothing whisper.

  He moved. His limbs thrashed leadenly, his chest heaved and panted, his eyes opened.

  He lay in a narrow bunk in a very small metal room.

  He looked slowly around. He did not know this place. The gleaming white metal of walls and ceiling was unfamiliar. There was a slight, persistent tingling vibration in everything that was unfamiliar, too.

  He was not in Wheel Five. He had seen every cell in it and none of them were like this. Also, there lacked the persistent susurrant sound of the ventilation pumps. Where--

  You're in a ship, Kieran. A starship.

  * * * * *

  Something back in his mind told him that. But of course it was ridiculous, a quirk of the imagination. There weren't any starships.

  You're all right, Kieran. You're in a starship, and you're all right.

  The emphatic assurance came from somewhere back in his brain and it was comforting. He didn't feel very good, he felt dopey and sore, but there was no use worrying about it when he knew for sure he was all right--

  The hell he was all right! He was in someplace new, someplace strange, and he felt half sick and he was not all right at all. Instead of lying here on his back listening to comforting lies from his imagination, he should get up, find out what was going on, what had happened.

  Of a sudden, memory began to clear. What had happened? Something, a crash, a terrible coldness--

  Kieran began to shiver. He had been in Section T2, on his way to the lock, and suddenly the floor had risen under him and Wheel Five had seemed to crash into pieces around him. The cold, the pain--

  You're in a starship. You're all right.

  For God's sake why did his mind keep telling him things like that, things he believed? For if he did not believe them he would be in a panic, not knowing where he was, how he had come here. There was panic in his mind but there was a barrier against it, the barrier of the soothing reassurances that came from he knew not where.

  He tried to sit up. It was useless, he was too weak. He lay, breathing heavily. He felt that he should be hysterical with fear but somehow he was not, that barrier in his mind prevented it.

  He had decided to try shouting when a door in the side of the little room slid open and a man came in.

  He came over and looked down at Kieran. He was a young man, sandy-haired, with a compact, chunky figure and a flat, hard face. His eyes were blue and intense, and they gave Kieran the feeling that this man was a wound-up spring. He looked down and said,

  "How do you feel, Kieran?"

  Kieran looked up at him. He asked, "Am I in a starship?"

  "Yes."

  "But there aren't any starships."

  "There are. You're in one." The sandy-haired man added, "My name is Vaillant."

  It's true, what he says, murmured the something in Kieran's mind.

  "Where--how--" Kieran began.

  Vaillant interrupted his stammering question. "As to where, we're quite a way from Earth, heading right now in the general direction of Altair. As to how--" He paused, looking keenly down at Kieran. "Don't you know how?"

  Of course I know. I was frozen, and now I have been awakened and time has gone by--

  Vaillant, looking searchingly down at his face, showed a trace of relief. "You do know, don't you? For a moment I was afraid it hadn't worked."

  He sat down on the edge of the bunk.

  "How long?" asked Kieran.

  Vaillant answered as casually as though it was the most ordinary question in the world. "A bit over a century."

  * * * * *

  It was wonderful, thought Kieran, how he could take a statement like that without getting excited. It was almost as though he'd known it all the time.

  "How--" he began, when there was an interruption.

  Something buzzed thinly in the pocket of Vaillant's shirt. He took out a thin three-inch disk of metal and said sharply into it,

  "Yes?"

  A tiny voice squawked from the disk. It was too far from Kieran for him to understand what it was saying but it had a note of excitement, almost of panic, in it.

  Something changed, hardened, in Vaillant's flat face. He said, "I expected it. I'll be right there. You know what to do."

  He did something to the disk and spoke into it again. "Paula, take over here."

  He stood up. Kieran looked up at him, feeling numb and stupid. "I'd like to know some things."

  "Later," said Vaillant. "We've got troubles. Stay where you are."

  He went rapidly out of the room. Kieran looked after him, wondering. Troubles--troubles in a starship? And a century had passed--

  He suddenly felt an emotion that shook his nerves and tightened his guts. It was beginning to hit him now. He sat up in the bunk and swung his legs out of it and tried to stand but could not, he was too weak. All he could do was to sit there, shaking.

  His mind could not take it in. It seemed only minutes ago that he had been walking along the corridor in Wheel Five. It seemed that Wheel Five must exist, that the Earth, the people, the time he knew, must still be somewhere out there. This could be some kind of a joke, or some kind of psychological experiment. That was it--the space-medicine boys were always making way-out experiments to find out how men would bear up in unusual conditions, and this must be one of them--

  A woman came into the room. She was a dark woman who might have been thirty years old, and who wore a white shirt and slacks. She would, he thought, have been good-looking if she had not looked so tired and so edgy.

  She came over and looked down at him and said to him,

  "Don't try to get up yet. You'll feel better very soon."

  Her voice was a slightly husky one. It was utterly familiar to Kieran, and yet he had never seen this woman before. Then it came to him.

  "You were the one who talked to me," he said, looking up at her. "In the dreams, I mean."

  She nodded. "I'm Paula Ray and I'm a psychologist. You had to be psychologically prepared for your awakening."

  "Prepared?"

  The woman explained patiently. "Hypnopedic technique--establishing facts in the subconscious of a sleeping patient. Otherwise, it would be too terrific a shock for you when you awakened. That was proved when they first tried reviving space-struck men, forty or fifty years ago."

  * * * * *

  The comfortable conviction that this was all a fake, an experiment of some kind, began to drain out of Kieran. But if it was true--

  He asked, with some difficulty, "You say that they found out how to revive space-frozen men, that long ago?"

  "Yes."

  "Yet it took forty or fifty years to get around to reviving me?"

  The woman sighed. "You have a misconception. The process of revival was perfected that long ago. But it has been used only immediately after a wreck or disaster. Men or women in the old space-cemeteries have not been revived."

  "Why not?" he asked carefully.

  "Unsatisfactory results," she said. "They could not adjust psychologically to changed conditions. They usually became unbalanced. Some suicides and a number of cases of extreme schizophrenia resulted. It was decided that it was no kindness to the older space-struck cases to bring them back."

  "But you brought me back?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "There were good reasons.
" She was, clearly, evading that question. She went on quickly. "The psychological shock of awakening would have been devastating, if you were not prepared. So, while you were still under sedation, I used the hypnopedic method on you. Your unconscious was aware of the main facts of the situation before you awoke, and that cushioned the shock."

  Kieran thought of himself, lying frozen and dead in a graveyard that was space, bodies drifting in orbit, circling slowly around each other as the years passed, in a macabre sarabande-- A deep shiver shook him.

  "Because all space-struck victims were in pressure-suits, dehydration was not the problem it could have been," Paula was saying. "But it's still a highly delicate process--"

  He looked at her and interrupted roughly. "What reasons?" And when she stared blankly, he added, "You said there were good reasons why you picked me for revival. What reasons?"

  Her face became tight and alert. "You were the oldest victim, in point of date. That was one of the determining factors--"

  "Look," said Kieran. "I'm not a child, nor yet a savage. You can drop the patronizing professional jargon and answer my question."

  Her voice became hard and brittle. "You're new to this environment. You wouldn't understand if I told you."

  "Try me."

  "All right," she answered. "We need you, as a symbol, in a political struggle we're waging against the Sakae."