It was strictly a feeling for technically-minded men. There were
innumerable instruments, and all of them registered well within the
limits of what it was proper for such instruments to read. The ship was
on course, floating in immensity. It had ample reserves of fuel. It had
left the Space Platform with all its take-off-from-Earth fuel replaced.
Besides, having been launched from the Platform at the proper instant,
it had the Platform's orbital speed converted to sunward velocity and
reinforced by blasts from the new first-stage booster which was not yet
fully expended. The replaced second-stage had not been touched, and
there was a third stage in reserve. The air system was functioning. The
oxygen flutter valve made a consoling noise toward the ship's stern. It
sounded like a staccato Bronx cheer. There was plenty of oxygen stored
under tremendous pressure. There were resources of food. And there was
all the equipment that Bramwell could possibly need for the development
and replacement of the ship's present Bramwell-Faraday screen, so that
men could stay in space and go farther and farther from home.
It was while they felt the fine contentment of men with a job to do and
the material for doing it that Bramwell awoke. At the beginning he was
starkly bewildered. He remembered drinking his glass of orange juice
the night before. But he remembered nothing more until he found himself
trussed up in an acceleration chair, in no-weight, in space, in the
one situation he'd been unable to nerve himself to face.
When he realized what had happened to him, he went into blind,
screaming, fighting hysterics.
* * * * *
They were three days on their way when McCauley said patiently:
"I've told you. You can use the communicator back to Earth and protest
that you were kidnaped. You can arrange for us to be arrested when we
return. But we can't turn back. It isn't possible. I wouldn't if I
could. Anyhow you're not nearly as scared as you were. You can think
straight, now, certainly! And you can see how ridiculous you'll look
if you become known as the man who had to be shanghaied for a space
trip because he'd neither the nerve to go nor the intestinal fortitude
to admit the fact and let another man try to do his work. If you want
to be known as a complete ass, you can. But do you?--Do you want to be
known as an utter ass?"
Bramwell glared at him. Nobody can stay panicked for days on end. If a
man had had a Damoclean sword hanging over his head for days, he'd wind
up accustomed to it. He wouldn't like it, but he couldn't stay scared.
Fear is an emergency mechanism to increase the pulse rate and release
adrenalin and tone the muscles for combat or flight. It is inherently a
limited response. It has a maximum duration.
And Bramwell was now past the limit of the time a man can stay
hysterically terrified. He didn't like space. He didn't like no-weight.
But most devastatingly and bitterly--now that he was no longer
terrified--he was ashamed. McCauley and Randy had seen him in babbling,
incoherent frenzy. His dignity was utterly gone. And he hated Randy
and McCauley poisonously because they'd seen what he would not admit
to himself--that he was afraid. It was humiliation to face them. It
was an intolerable rasping-raw of his vanity to be in their presence.
They knew he'd been afraid and that he'd bluffed to hide it. They'd
seen him crack up when he found himself in space. He was shamed
beyond endurance. Therefore he raged, and therefore he hated them
irreconcilably.
McCauley went on as patiently as before:
"You can do your work now, and it will never be known that you had to
be forced to it like a scared little boy. Or you can not do it, and it
won't get done, and the history books will say that men once started
for the stars but had to come home because Doctor Bramwell's pride
prevented him from working on the problem he was the only man who could
solve."
Randy, watching, nodded to himself. McCauley was doing a good job of
argument. That last "only man who could" was flattery, and Bramwell
ought to respond to it.
"I shall charge," said Bramwell spitefully, "that you two prevented me
from doing my work by imposing impossible working conditions on me!"
"Name possible ones," said McCauley patiently, "and you'll get them if
they're available."
The canary, Mr. Perkins, chirped from its cage. The bird was upside
down in relation to Bramwell, but it seemed to have adjusted admirably
to the conditions of space travel.
"The soundproofed room," said Bramwell triumphantly, "is ridiculously
small. I need more space. But above all I need quiet! I need to be
isolated from the society of fools and from noises I cannot endure!"
Mr. Perkins chirped again. The canary was still bewildered, but at
least it could see now, and it'd found out how to get at its food and
water, and it felt quite cheerful.
"... And you might start," rasped Bramwell, "by strangling that blasted
canary! I abominate canaries!"
"Things are looking up, Ed," Randy said cheerfully. "There can't be
anything very much wrong with a man who hates dogs, children, and
canary birds!"
But McCauley had begun thoughtfully to examine the layout of the
interior of the ship.
* * * * *
They were two weeks on the way toward Venus. The flare-particle counter
clicked every second and a half. The sun's disk, ahead, was appreciably
larger and Venus was a thinner crescent than before. Earth was a small
object, though still larger than Venus, and the moon was very small
indeed. At this distance the Space Platform was, of course, invisible.
But the changes inside the ship were more marked than those outside.
The interior of the ship was now divided into two parts. McCauley and
Randy had pulled down the small cubicle made of soundproofing material
that had been built for Bramwell to work in. They had used the same
material to wall off a full half of the ship. There was a door in the
wall, and part of the air-freshening system operated through sound
baffles so that the air in the walled-off space was changed, quite
silently, with the same regularity as the air in the forward end of the
ship, where McCauley and Randy did their work.
But McCauley was vaguely disturbed. It had developed gradually, but
he did not feel right. Even though he could not become physically
exhausted in a total absence of gravity, he felt dull and weary. There
were measurements of flare-particle frequency to be recorded, both from
outside the ship where the Bramwell-Faraday screen did not operate, and
from inside where it did. The figures were curiously difficult to copy.
But there was no reason for him to feel weak and stupid. The air system
worked perfectly. The food was adequate. The ship moved steadily,
silently, perfectly on its way at a certain number of miles per second,
which was increasing a trifle because of the sun's gravitational field.
Everything seemed perfect. But he didn't feel right. Randy was not
himself, either. And Mr. Perkins sang only half-heartedly.
The canary began, now, what started out to be a beautifully executed
trill, but which died away after half a dozen tremolos.
"Mr. Perkins isn't in good voice today. What's troubling him?" Randy
spoke with a certain effort.
McCauley concentrated on the report he was filling out. He shook his
head and looked again; he was startled.
"Look here!" he said sharply. "We had the screen on when we left the
Platform. It kept out the radiation when we went through the Van Allen
belt. But now we're nearer the sun. Stuff's coming through the screen!
It's been coming through for days! And we haven't noticed it! What's
the matter with us?"
"I wouldn't know," said Randy listlessly.
"We're not on the ball," said McCauley. "We've got to do something
about this!"
He rose from his chair. It took but the slightest of effort, and he
floated free. He reached out his hand to the wall and directed the
motion of his whole body. He approached the soundproof barrier that now
divided the ship into two separate parts. He caught a handhold on the
door and knocked.
Minutes later the door opened. There was no gravity, so Bramwell did
not stand in the opening. He floated there, scowling. He and McCauley
faced each other, very much like swimmers, except that they swam in air.
"Radiation's coming through the screen," said McCauley. "It shouldn't.
Not this early, anyhow. Shouldn't something be done? I'm ordered to
consult you about all adjustments of the screen."
He was vaguely dissatisfied with himself for asking. He should not have
to ask anyone for instructions. He was ordered to in this case, but
decisions were his job.
"Turn it up!" said Bramwell peevishly. Then he seemed to notice that
he had not been actively unpleasant. He moved quickly to correct the
omission. "How many times," he demanded furiously, "have I told you not
to disturb me! Noise upsets me! Leave me alone! Isn't it enough that I
have to share the ship with clods, without having you bang on my door?"
He glared around the forward part of the ship. Mr. Perkins sang again,
a half-hearted attempt at a warble. "Noise! Noise! Noise!" rasped
Bramwell.
He pulled the door shut. McCauley floated lethargically to the screen
unit and made an adjustment.
Nothing important apparently happened, but something ceased to happen
so often. The sharp, slightly irregular clicking of the particle
counter seemed to stop. It was a full five seconds before it clicked
again, six before it clicked a second time, and five before it clicked
a third.
"I wish," said McCauley lethargically, "that I'd been a little more on
the job. Why didn't we notice the radiation count going up, Randy?"
"Bramwell complains if we touch the side of the ship because it makes
noises inside his sanctum," Randy answered. "Maybe we've been trying
not to think for fear the noise would disturb him."
McCauley considered the comment carefully, which was itself an
indication that he was not up to par.
"No," he said slowly, "it's not that. But we don't feel right. Maybe
we'd better take our temperatures. It would be ghastly if we were
getting sick! Bramwell couldn't feed himself, let alone get the ship
around Venus!"
With some effort he found a clinical thermometer. But they did not have
any fever. In fact, their temperatures were considerably lower than the
98.6° F. which is considered the norm for men in good health.
* * * * *
They were two weeks and five days on their way. McCauley shook his
head to clear his mind. He reread what he had just written in the
ship's log, vaguely puzzled because it did not seem to make sense. With
enormous effort he checked each word and found that he had left one
out here and another one there. With great determination he put them
in. Somewhere in his mind there was a feeling that he needed to do
something very urgently, but he could not think what it was.
"Randy," he said, and something in his brain noted that his voice was
plaintive, "I can't seem to think straight! There's something I ought
to do! What is it?"
Randy shook his head. He floated in the straps of his acceleration
chair; not that the chair was needed, but because it held him still so
that there was no possible chance of his striking against the unmuffled
wall of the ship and so sending a solid-conduction sound back to
Bramwell.
"I don't know," said Randy flatly. "I don't feel too bright myself."
The soundproof door of the after compartment opened. Bramwell came out.
Somehow he looked pathetic and frustrated, but he essayed rage.
"I have to have silence!" he cried ferociously. "You are making noises!
I cannot think! And I must think! I have to have silence!"
McCauley said numbly:
"I'm sitting here, and Randy's in his chair. There's no noise."
"There is noise, or why can't I think? You are doing something to keep
me from thinking!... That canary! It has been singing! That's it! You
must wring its neck so I can think!"
"No," said McCauley, "it hasn't been singing. It hasn't sung for a
long time. It did, but it doesn't any more. Why?"
"Something is the matter!" insisted Bramwell desperately. "I'm stupid!
I'm as stupid as you! And I must use my brains!"
"You've got everything we can give you," said McCauley without
particular emphasis. "We can't seem to do our work right either."
"There is some new condition we do not know about," Bramwell said, in
a sort of puny panic. "There is something in space which is working to
destroy us! Here! Send this message back to Earth!" McCauley took the
slip of paper on which words were written in an erratic, spidery hand.
"But _I_ think you are making noises!"
Bramwell pulled himself back into his soundproof half of the ship. The
door closed behind him, but not quite in time to cut off the beginning
of an agitated whimpering sound.
McCauley pushed the beam-on button. He should have checked the time,
Earth time, to see if Canaveral were on the side of Earth from which
it could pick up the beamed message from space. It wasn't, but he
didn't think to check. He read, in a monotone, the message Bramwell had
written out:
_I feel the purpose impossible probable effect similar to X-rays
with this is vital to further but I have no instruments._
_Bramwell._
He was vaguely puzzled but he read it faithfully. Then, without
checking for reception, he turned off the transmitter. He went back
to the painful task of trying to make the ship's log entry at which
he'd been working for a long time. He assured himself that though the
message did not mean anything to him, they'd understand it back on
Earth.
But they didn't. It didn't get back to Earth. The Venus ship had been
pointed very accurately so that the parabolic reflector for the tight
beam to Earth was perfectly aligned. But Bramwell had protested the
faint, faint hum of the gyros which kept the ship pointed correctly.
McCauley had turned them off. He'd meant to re-align the ship for each
period of communication, but his mind was confused and he forgot.
Earth had received no message from the Venus ship for six days past.
There was consternation in the Space Service.
It wouldn't have lessened any had Bramwell's message been picked up.
He'd meant to say that he felt that achievement of the Venus ship's
purpose was impossible because of something which doomed the men in
it. He thought it probable that some previously unnoticed effect of
radiation, perhaps similar to X-rays, was destroying their capacity to
think. This effect should be studied. It was vital to further space
exploration. But he had no instruments that could detect it.
* * * * *
They were three weeks out from Earth. The Bramwell-Faraday screen was
turned up to full strength, and still the radiation counter clicked
and clicked. It now indicated a higher frequency of radiation-particle
penetration than was experienced in any of the Van Allen bands around
Earth. Bramwell was a pitiable figure. Enough of his mental capacity
remained to inform him of his intellectual degeneration. Now and again
he popped into the forward part of the ship, trying to catch McCauley
or Randy at some activity that was stealing his brain power away. When
he failed to do so, he reacted with rages that would have been alarming
except that he had not the energy for anything more than words.
McCauley struggled against a massive indifference. One part of his
mind stood aside and knew that the occupants of the ship were doomed,
but he could not care. Mr. Perkins no longer moved about its cage.
Its feathers fluffed, the bird might be dead on its perch. McCauley
tried painstakingly to write up the ship's log, but what he wrote
was confused, meaningless. Even his handwriting grew steadily more
illegible.
Then, at three weeks and one day, the leak alarms rang stridently. They
made a frightful clamor all over the ship. The few compartment doors
closed tightly.
"Leak," muttered McCauley to himself. "Prob'ly meteorite. Got to get in
suit and fix leak...."
Fighting an overwhelming lethargy, he floated toward the space suit
rack, missed it by yards, doggedly made his way back to it, and numbly
began to get into a suit. Randy worked at the same task. He stopped to
rest.
"Randy," said McCauley protestingly. "Get in suit! Leak!"
He himself was incredibly feeble. Had there been weight in the ship, he
could not have lifted his helmet to his head. He settled it over his
shoulders, but his fingers failed to turn the thumbnuts tight. Even so,
there was the familiar feel of air blowing across his face.
Strength came to him. Not instantly, but with the first breaths of
air from the suit tank his head seemed to clear a little. After more
breaths, his hands moved assuredly. He began to realize the change
in himself and gulped down deep lungfuls of the dry, curiously
flat-smelling stored air.
Randy hadn't finished getting into his suit; he seemed to have gone to
sleep. But when McCauley approached him in the space suit, Randy's eyes
turned toward him incuriously.
McCauley thrust him into the space suit and clamped down the helmet.
Randy suddenly stared.
"Something's been wrong with the ship's air!" snapped McCauley, feeling
more like himself every second. "It's no good! Breathe deep, Randy!
Breathe deep!"
Randy obeyed. His eyes cleared.
"Bramwell!" snapped McCauley. "Get him in a suit! He hasn't sense
enough to do it himself!"
He flung himself at the control board. The leak was....
But there was no leak. The leak alarm had rung, but every pressure
indicator in every part of the ship showed the same figure. It was....
McCauley gazed incredulously at the dials. The ship's interior pressure
was 12.8 pounds to the square inch as against a normal 14.7. The
difference was enough to set off the leak alarm, but a thinning of the
air like this was not enough to cause the stupidity, the lethargy, the
confused and helpless thinking which McCauley--marveling--realized had
appeared during the past three weeks.
He heard a howling noise between the clamors of the gongs. It was
Bramwell.
"You're making a noise!" wailed Bramwell. "I can't have a noise! I must
have quiet...."
McCauley spoke crisply into the transmitter, sending a tight-beam
message back to Earth. It would be minutes before it was received, as
against the less-than-two-second lag in a message sent from the moon to
Earth.
"We were suffering from oxygen starvation," said McCauley briskly. "The
plants in the air-system's hydroponic garden absorbed carbon dioxide
and gave off oxygen, but not quite cent per cent. There was a steady
small loss of oxygen in the ship, caused by the use of oxygen as well
as carbon by the growing plants. This small loss should have been
made up by the addition of oxygen to keep the volume of the ship's
air constant. But it happened that the oxygen flutter valve became
jammed...."
He heard an explosive sigh of relief behind him, but he carefully did
not look up at Bramwell. Bramwell was very silent these days, and he
practiced extreme self-control. He realized now that he'd let too many
things bother him. But he was still bothered, and horribly so, by the
memory of his inability to make up his mind to face the journey in
space, or to arrange for somebody to substitute for him, so he'd had to
be shanghaied. He was even more bothered by the memory of his behavior
when he found himself in a ship off for a swing in to Venus and out
again. McCauley and Randy ignored these past happenings, and Bramwell
would never be able to bring himself to mention them. But he was very
much ashamed.
The thing that disturbed him most, however--the thing that made
him extremely conscientious and extremely self-controlled--was the
consequences of not facing things and of trying to cover up his own
shortcomings. When he got over his hysterics he wanted to get even
with McCauley and Randy by defying them. But he hadn't dared defy them
openly. He'd been peevish and ashamed and humiliated. To him the bronx
cheer of the oxygen flutter valve had seemed a mockery. But he still
felt superior to pieces of machinery. So when the flutter valve went
"_Tht-tht-tht-tht!_" at him, he angrily turned it off. And the human
race almost had to stay on Earth forever because of it. The three of
them came very close to dying.
McCauley continued talking matter-of-factly into the transmitter.
"As a result of the jammed valve, there was a steady lowering of the
oxygen content of the air, but the carbon dioxide content did not
increase. The air was getting closer and closer to pure nitrogen all
the time, but we didn't notice, because a person feels suffocated by an
excess of carbon dioxide rather than by a lack of oxygen. We were all
dying quite comfortably when the leak alarm went off because the air
pressure was dropping as the oxygen left us. When the alarm went off,
we found the trouble and brought the oxygen concentration up to what it
should be. We think there should be no more trouble. In fact...."
He stood up and handed the microphone to Bramwell. Bramwell hesitated a
moment. Then he spoke.
"I have to report that the problem of a stronger Bramwell-Faraday
screen field seems to be solved. This particular accident suggested
a theory. Quite coincidentally, the theory resembled one aspect of
charged-particle theory. It led to an idea. The new screen has a very
gratifying reflex action which uses the velocity of the flare particles
themselves to increase the screen's resistance. The charged particles
are tricked into defeating themselves. I will have a detailed account
of the theory and the apparatus shortly."
Mr. Perkins, in its cage against the wall, burst into song. The canary
began with a trill and went on to a warble; then Mr. Perkins essayed a
glocken. He accomplished it triumphantly. Bramwell scowled at it from
habit. But then he carefully smoothed out his forehead as he handed the
microphone back to McCauley. He nodded at the tiny cage.
"Not bad," he admitted. "Not bad at all!"
* * * * *
The Venus ship got back to its rendezvous with Earth some four months
and eighteen days after take-off. At that time, this was the longest
space journey ever made by man. But it was not only the longest trip.
As a result of it, the reflex Bramwell screen had been developed along
a new principle: The higher the velocity of a charged particle, the
firmer the screen's resistance to its passage. Since the screen could
stop even the highest-energy cosmic particles, the effect of such
particles upon living matter could be determined by comparing exposed
organisms--human beings and all other living things on Earth--to other
organisms shielded from cosmic radiation. The ship, too, had made
some close-range infrared photographs of Venus and prepared a fairly
complete map of the planetary features underneath the cloud bank. The
length of Venus' day was established. The....
It was a highly successful expedition from all standpoints.
But Randy insisted that the most remarkable result was the change in
Bramwell. There was no doubt that Bramwell had one of the best brains
in the solar system. Even when they disliked him most, both McCauley
and Randy had respected his brains. But after Bramwell found out that
they'd never refer to the way he acted before and immediately after he
was shanghaied, the fact that he was so ashamed of himself improved him
as far as human society was concerned.
He improved so much, in fact, that by the time they got back to Earth,
McCauley and Randy were not much more polite to him than they were to
each other.
Which was high honor.
_6_