Ken flung himself on the couch. Carol moved in quietly beside him.
"You understand, Carol," he said, "you're to touch no controls unless
I'm unable to."
"Yes."
"You'll handle the cameras only, but you'll keep reminding me of every
step to be taken, as though I'd forgotten, and make sure I answer
sensibly each time."
"Yes, Ken."
Yes, _Ken_. A pulse throbbed in his temple.
They watched the crowd on the screen--scattered now, far from that area
below and behind the ship which would be washed in radiation. They
listened to the radio calling off the minutes before departure. Ken
kept his thoughts on the structure of the space vessel, similar in
many ways to vastly cheaper atmosphere models he and Carol had
flown--separately--for hundreds of training hours. Behind them, and
lining the inner hull, was a light, spongy wall protecting them from the
atomic converters aft. The surrounding couch could be regulated to form
a resilient cocoon during high-G acceleration and deceleration, or
during periods of weightlessness. Forward were the controls, instruments
and hooded viewport.
Escape velocity was not needed to pull away from gravity. With atomic
engines and the new, low-mass shielding, fuel quantity was a problem of
dollars only--and none had been spared for this voyage. The
psychologists had seen to that.
"Eight minutes to take-off."
He started the atomic reactors, a mighty purring here in the sealed
cabin. Gently, watching the instruments, he tested bow and stern
rockets, matching fore and aft forces delicately, tentatively increasing
stern thrust until the craft barely stirred in its silicone-greased,
magnetized launching rack.
"Two minutes to take-off."
They placed their faces against soft masks in the couch, down through
which they could watch the instruments, in a mirror, the video screen
and bow viewport. The couch encompassed them, their arms in padded slots
reaching to the controls.
"... thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one...."
Thunder hammered at their ears. The couch squeezed them as the
_Latecomer_ shot beyond its ramp, increased its velocity. Ken gripped a
lever which cut in the autopilot to take them beyond atmosphere, beyond
gravity.
* * * * *
Ken unhooded the viewport, leaving covered only that section which
blocked a tiny blinding sun. They stared into an utter, absolute ebony
that suddenly seemed to be straining against the thick canopy, mocking
the dim lights of the compartment. For many hours now, nothing to do but
wait and watch, make occasional control corrections.
He caused the couch to relax, offered Carol a water sausage. They had
eaten nothing, and drunk but sparingly, since twenty-four hours before
take-off. Her hand touched his as she took the container. It was like an
electric shock, and his heart thudded. Deliberately, he brushed his
fingers over hers, clasped her wrist, looking at her.
She became motionless. Then she looked up at him, lingeringly. Her lips
parted.
The pressure within him mounted. Almost reverently he reached for
her--then stopped when tears formed in her eyes. He drew back,
uncomprehending. Could desire be coupled with sorrow? Or was he merely
reading desire into some emotion not remotely connected with passion?
She had been given to him without reservation, but he could not bring
himself to take her unwillingly. The difference, he realized, between
love and lust--damn the psychologists. He let out his breath, fumbled in
a small plastic box near the controls, dug out several nutriment bars.
He handed a couple to Carol without looking at her and munched unhappily
at the chocolate-flavored ration.
They watched the blackness of space for hours. The stars appeared as
bright glowing blobs sunk dismally far into the heavy depths of some
Stygian jelly. It was a time to be savoring the first experience of man
beyond his mortal sphere, but Ken stared unseeingly, his mind dulled,
vacant with indecision and disillusion that was almost a physical hurt.
The zest of adventure, in the midst of adventure, was throttled before
it saw life. The sustaining dreams of training and preparation were
dusty misery. Robotically, he watched the instruments, occasionally made
microscopic adjustments. Carol's hands, close to his, infrequently
changed camera settings.
Unexpectedly the radio sounded. Ken tuned to maximum volume, strained to
hear the muted words. It was a moment before he realized they were
drawling, abnormally slow, like one of the old spring-wound phonographs
running down. When he caught it, the message stunned him.
"_Late-comm-merr_ pers-sonn-nell. Re-turnn noww, noww, noww.
Emerr-genn-cy orr-derr of the Prezz-zi-dent. _Llate-comm-merr_
pers-sonn-nell...."
He listened to it twice more before silencing the radio. Turn back? Now?
He looked at Carol. She returned his stare, drawing her arms up out of
the slots and leaning on her elbows, frowning in puzzlement. Her breasts
were pendent promises of--further disappointment? Were both love and
life to be reduced, in a day, to twin voids of defeat? Love was Carol
and life was a successful flight around the moon.
Discipline kept his act just short of viciousness as he slapped the
controls back to manual. Grimly he silenced the stern rockets, cut in
the bow units slowly. The flight was to have been a loop "over" the
moon, almost intersecting its orbit at the precise time it swung
ponderously by. What possible emergency could have arisen?
* * * * *
Ken couldn't remember just when the fear had started--maybe on the way
outward, now that he thought of it: the feeling of deep depression. They
were in free fall, weightless, the couch adjusted to keep them floating
within a few inches of its confines. The brilliant, abandoned moon had
just swung behind its big-sister world, the glaring furnace of Sol was
still thwarted by a section of bow hood.
He felt the fear mount--little tugging fingers frantically at work
within his chest. The blue sphere of Earth seemed to recede in the black
muck, although he knew it was only an optical effect of space--of the
vast, scornful emptiness in which the stars were but helpless,
hopelessly enmeshed droplets of dross.
He shivered involuntarily. With the movement he touched the side of the
couch and rebounded against Carol.
She screamed.
He stared at her, his fear mounting swiftly through panic to abject,
uncaring terror. Carol had drawn herself up into a knot, the fetal
position of infantile regression; her eyes were wide, unseeing, her
mouth open in the scream that was now soundless.
Ken felt his mind brinking on madness. He continued to stare in a
terrified frenzy until, from some tiny nook of sanity deep inside him,
came the realization that this was Carol beside him--Carol, who was his,
who needed him....
He fought. He staggered up from depths of bleak despair, aided by that
deep-rooted male instinct which rouses raging fury at danger to his
beloved. The innate protective impulse was heightened, strengthened by
that emotional desire which is strongest at first contact, undiluted by
familiarity and the consequent dissolution of ideals. The prime strength
of manhood blasted in a coruscating mental flare against the forces of
darkness and the unknown. Tenderly, he encircled her floating body with
his arms and drew her close. He soothed her as one might a baby.
Slowly her eyes came back from horrific infinity. Slowly they focused on
his. And then, comprehension returned, she pressed tightly against him,
clung to him, sobbing with the remnant fear of fear remembered.
He talked to her for an hour, caressing, reassuring, until her responses
were normal beyond any doubt. Then he told her he loved her.
She raised her head from where it was burrowed against his chest.
"_Love_ me, Ken? Love _me_?"
He blinked in astonishment. "Of course I love you. It seems like I've
always loved you. I tried to tell you. I--"
But she was crying again, shaking her head a little, saying, "Ken, Ken,"
over and over.
This time he continued to hold her intimately close. "What's the matter?
Anything wrong with love?"
"But Ken--you could have any girl in the world!"
"Me? Where'd you get that idea?"
"Why, everyone knows the story of your training, and what it was for.
The swoon clubs must have sent you tons of letters!"
"I never got any."
"Censors?"
He shrugged. "Could be. I used to drive myself nuts thinking of all the
guys you must be going out with. Your story was spread around just as
much as mine."
"They picked my few escorts with care. I used to lie awake thinking of
you running around with hundreds of girls."
Ken snorted. "The army kept me too busy. I went out with a few, but I
never loved anybody but you. Hell, I'm only nineteen, you know."
She nodded, her eyes bright with happiness. She was a year younger. Then
her words came in a flood. "I couldn't believe you'd love me. They told
me I was to go with you and do anything you said--anything. No
explanation, but I knew what they meant and I agreed because you were
doing such a great thing for the world and--I wanted you too. But I
thought you'd just want me for the trip, and afterward you'd go back to
your other girls, and--"
He kissed her. Again. And again. Surely there never was, never could be,
a greater delight embracing than in the floating, heady, free fall of
null-G. Certainly the psychologists knew no other method of retaining
sanity in the cruelly endless jet pit engulfing the stars. Which was why
they had planned it that way.
* * * * *
Well out of atmosphere he began to brake skillfully, easing the craft
into an orbital arc that would later be changed to a descending spiral.
Biting into rarified air, he adjusted the hull heat distributor, cut in
the refrigeration unit, increased oxygen a trifle. He removed a small
envelope from its taped position on a panel and opened it to read his
landing instructions. Then he looked questioningly at Carol.
"Southwest Oregon. The Oregon Caves National Monument. We're to go in on
a beacon signal."
"You don't suppose they want us to show survival ability?"
"On a deal like this? No, something's haywire here. First, there's not a
strip that'll take the _Latecomer_ for at least a hundred miles around,
and the only road into the area twists like a snake. This baby wasn't
built with a chute, either. Second, it's only about ten miles from some
ranches, even if there's no one at the chateau, so it wouldn't be a
survival problem." He dropped the craft's nose a few more degrees.
"Are there any more instructions?"
"Must be." He unfolded the slip. "'Abandon ship immediately upon
landing. Enter bronze portal to Caves with all possible haste. Look for
inscribed square beside door, with a slot at each corner. Activate door
as follows: simultaneously insert curved blade of longer knife entirely
in upper left-hand slot, and straight blade of shorter knife entirely in
lower right-hand slot. Extreme emergency. Memorize and destroy these
orders.'" Carol hadn't seen the knives.
They lay in stunned silence until she gasped, "But, Ken--this means they
_knew_ about the emergency before we took off!"
He nodded grimly. "We were never supposed to reach the moon." He
crumpled the paper, thrust it into his mouth and chewed on it awhile,
then slipped it into the waste disposal unit. "Well, we'll pick up the
beacon and buzz the Caves area for possibilities. There was nothing said
about making radio contact, so we'll just listen in. Want to take over
the radio on the way down?" He forced the _Latecomer_ into as tight a
spiral as he dared. The wings were still useless here in the ionosphere.
Carol turned on the receiver, dialed expectantly. "Ken--the whole band
is silent!"
"Take it easy, Lieutenant honey--we're barely through the F_{2} layer."
But all bands remained dead except for sun static. Rockets chattering
for a 2G brake and directional control, they plunged through the F_{1}
stratum, losing Sol behind the eastern rim of Terra. Down, down for dim
countless minutes, through the thin ionization of E, past the lowest
ranges of auroras and noctilucent clouds and below the ozone layer.
Still no signals of any kind on any frequency.
At last Ken leveled off in the troposphere, at an altitude of five
miles. A placid, swollen sun rode into view while they flashed west-ward
over the Atlantic in a straight and lowering course that would take them
over New York. The momentous--even though aborted--flight was over. Each
tiniest mechanism of the _Latecomer_ had functioned perfectly. Ken took
a deep breath at the sheer pleasure of normal gravity. Man held the key
to the planets, at least--if the psychologists could figure some way to
nullify the soul-shattering fear imbued by deep space. Or had he and
Carol reached the maximum distance life could tolerate? Was that the
foreseen emergency, withheld from them lest it sap their
carefully-nurtured morale? He felt a vague, gnawing worry about the
silence of earth's transmitters.
New York would supply the answer. Over New York the cacaphony of blaring
broadcasts would practically tear the receivers from their moorings.
And New York did yield an answer--of sorts. With Long Island in visual
range, and not a sound or a picture on any wave length which Carol's
flying fingers tuned in at maximum volume, Ken dipped below legal
ceiling to drag the city.
Then his reactions galvanized him to motion of a speed outstripping his
thoughts. Hardly hearing Carol's gasp of dismay, he snapped the coccoon
tight about them like a sprung trap, blasted the ship's nose to a
skidding vertical and spurted away from the yawning craters of New York
City at five Gs.
* * * * *
He leveled off in ozone over Canada and relaxed the couch.
Unbelievingly, he looked at Carol. She looked back at him, wide-eyed.
"Listen, Carol--we can't both be crazy the same way. You tell me exactly
what you saw."
"Well--everything had been bombed."
"What else?"
"There--there wasn't any movement or people or--"
"_What else._"
"There--oh, Ken, there were _trees growing in the craters_!"
Some of the tenseness left his features. "Okay, honey. Now we know a
little bit. The war came and went and there's not an active transmitter
in the world. Somebody knew it was coming, even before we left, so they
want us to land at a hideout in Oregon. There'll be a landing strip
there--they've had more than a month to build it since I was at the
Caves, and it only took a day for the whole war, for the radiation to
clear up--and for twenty--maybe fifty-year-old trees to grow!" His
ending sarcasm was directed at himself; youth angers at the spur of
illogicalness.
Carol pressed his shoulder and kissed him. "Darling--maybe we shouldn't
even think about it now. They must be waiting for us in Oregon."
"Yeah," he said absently. "Wonder what happened farther inland?" He
herded the _Latecomer_ down along the border of Lakes Ontario and Erie.
Cleveland was dotted with lakes, the city rubble choked with brush. On a
zig-zag course, Detroit was a wilderness, Chicago almost a part of Lake
Michigan. Carol's spirits sank with each revelation.
They arced high above the jet winds, on course to Oregon.
Ken almost shouted with joy when their beacon code came in weakly,
strengthening as they approached the Pacific. Carol hugged him until he
relinquished control to the autopilot and gave her his undivided
attention.
The chronometer ticked away time, but Sol gave up the unequal race, and
so it was another morning of the same day when Ken slipped the
_Latecomer_ over the mighty Cascades, homing on the beacon until they
both saw the outline of a long, level, arrow straight runway carved from
forested mountainside and spanning chasmal, growth-choked gulches.
But it was the outline only, discernible through a light rain. "At least
two years' work," mused Ken, "littered with at least a hundred years'
debris. _And we've only been gone a day._" He killed signal reception,
circled the runway.
Carol pressed his arm. "It's been longer than a day, Ken. I mean, we've
actually used up more time, because it was morning when we were over New
York, and it's still--"
"Okay--day and night don't mean much. But we've clocked a little over
thirty-three hours since we took off. That's _our_ time."
There was a catch in her throat. "I know, darling. Something's horribly
wrong. Everybody we know must be dead!"