Birthday! Nils had forgotten all about it. That was right--he was
thirty-five today. Realizing that he must have looked puzzled, he
laughed. "It slipped my mind completely," he explained. "When you're
on another planet, Earth dates get all mixed up."
Kerr said, "The captain's ordered you aloft for a physical check-up. It
came over the radio while you were down."
Nils Borgmann stopped laughing. That could mean he'd never get a chance
to make another plunge, never have another crack at an air lion, never
collect that seventh bonus. They'd rotate him, put him on the mother
ship and fill in on the raft with a substitute.
Nils clambered to his feet, helped by Kerr and the other man, and
walked over to take a look at the air lion he had just killed. It was
a good, big beast, its fur still that faint yellowish color that was
bleached out on Earth. It looked something like a walrus, but without
any tusks.
"Just one more," Nils said, "and I'm going to quit. I've got thirty
thousand dollars in bonuses, on top of my pay."
Kerr said, "That's almost enough to buy your wife an air lion coat.
That'd be a nice present, so that you could be reminded of your happy
days on Uranus every time she wore it."
Nils laughed and said, "Go to hell." He was feeling pretty good again.
Kerr always perked him up. After all, a physical examination might be
just routine; they might find out that he could go on hunting air
lions for five more years if he wanted to.
The scout came roaring over the horizon; but no one could hear it in
the airlessness. Somebody saw it and said, "Here comes Erskine!" and
everybody turned to watch. The scout was a gaudy red and came in low
over the surface of the atmosphere. It put out its pontoons and came to
a landing near the raft. Then it taxied over slowly, its jets running
at their lowest speed. When it got very close it cut its motors and men
in clumsy space suits grappled it and made it fast with ropes.
Erskine hopped out of the scout. You could tell who it was from the
cocky stride and the colorfully decorated suit, which he spent hours in
painting and shining. "Who's Nils Borgmann?" he asked. "The lucky man
gets a trip upstairs for tonight. You scow jockeys will have to sleep
out in the cold again."
Actually, the raftsmen lived in an air-filled bubble in the center of
the raft which was comfortable and warm. But it was a standing joke
that the men "upstairs," in the ship that wheeled idly in its orbit
around Uranus, slept in feather beds every night with all the comforts
of home except women--and some rumors even gave them that advantage.
"Here I am," Borgmann said.
"Let's go," Erskine said. "This smell offends my nostrils. I just don't
know how you guys stand it down here."
Somebody guffawed, and somebody else began singing, "Swing low, sweet
chariot, comin' for to carry me home...."
* * * * *
Borgmann walked to Erskine's side and let the scout pilot boost him
into the cabin. "So long, suckers," Erskine said as he climbed into
the scout and clanged the door shut behind him. He pressed a button
which cleared out the faint traces of Uranian atmosphere in the cabin
and pumped in an Earth-type mixture. Then he unscrewed his helmet and
grinned at Nils, who by then was struggling with his own. "I hear you
got your sixth one today," he said, starting up the jets.
"That's right," Nils answered self-consciously.
"Well, that's good. There aren't many men with six lions to their
credit." He took off, and Nils could feel the scout rising, heading out
into space.
Erskine was busy with his navigation, and Nils was glad that there
was little time for conversation. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
He was always tired after a plunge. But sleep would not come, and he
roused himself and peered out of the porthole.
By this time the raft had dwindled to a speck on the vast, featureless
surface, and the scout had climbed high above it. The sky was black,
even though it was a region of eternal day. On the raft, far below,
little sparkles of light moved in a random dance--the headlamps of the
men.
But out and away the scout moved until the horizon lay between it and
the raft. High and higher it went until the planet was a smooth, gray
ball beneath and behind it. And then, out of the black daylight sky,
a pattern of red and green lights seemed to take shape above them and
ahead. It was _Proserpine_, their ship.
The scout and the ship fell toward each other at tremendous speeds:
the ship loomed huge, like a great silver cigar, then like a curved
wall, then like a metal hand someone was holding up just outside the
portholes so that you could not see out. It seemed to Nils that it was
inevitable that they crash. Erskine flipped the ship over, but there
was no discomfort because neither he nor Nils had any weight to be
displaced. And then Nils saw him flip the toggle that turned on the
scout's magnetic grapple. There was a scrape and a jarring bump that
sent Nils floating out into weightlessness. And the scout had arrived
home.
The scout was swung into the ship by powerful motors, and after the
ringing of the bell which signified that the scout's berth was filled
with air, the two men emerged from the small craft and went into the
ship. Captain Davis was there to greet them. "Good trip," he told
Erskine. "Borgmann, I'll bet you're happy to get aboard ship again." He
shook hands vigorously. "We have a good hot dinner waiting for you, and
then a bath and a soft bed. You'll see Dr. Carpenter in the morning."
And, after months on the raft, life on board _Proserpine_ was a luxury.
The food was good; even though it, like that on the raft, came from
cans, it was prepared with more artistry. There were no facilities for
bathing on the raft, and the streaming water of the shower and rich
suds of the soap was a real sensuous delight. And the beds--well, the
bunks on the raft were good, but there was something about the beds
on the ship that were so eminently sleepable that Nils dropped off
immediately, not even thinking about the physical examination.
* * * * *
It was the first thing he thought of, however, when he woke up in
the morning. And he was worried. It seemed, today, very real and
inescapable; last night the idea had been so new that he had not really
been fully aware of what it might mean.
And immediately after breakfast he was subjected to it. The doctor was
thorough; Nils had to give him credit for that. And at the end, he
said, "Well, Borgmann, it looks like a vacation for you."
Nils had been dreading those words so much that they were really not
much of a surprise to him. But still there was a dejection that he
could not overcome. He said, "What are the chances of my getting one
more lion before I have to quit?"
The doctor was surprised. "Generally the men are glad enough to get off
Uranus. We'll have enough trouble getting one of _Proserpine's_ crewmen
to go down there and take your place."
"I know," Nils said, "but with me it's different. I want one more
chance at a lion."
"Well," the doctor said, "you'll have to take that up with Captain
Davis. But, my recommendation is that you stay up here on _Proserpine_
until we go home."
And so Nils took up the matter with Captain Davis. The captain was also
surprised. "I can't understand it, Nils. You have thirty thousand
dollars in bonuses already, on top of your salary of six thousand for
the year. Why do you want to go down again and take all those chances?"
Nils was not a man for making speeches, but he did his best to explain
to the Captain that he had seven children, and it took one air lion to
get each of them a college education. He had one child unprovided for,
little Siegfried, and he didn't want to quit until he had taken care of
them all.
"Well, that's very commendable, Nils, and I can appreciate your point.
But why are you so certain that it will take exactly five thousand
dollars to get each one through college? There are state universities,
you know, and they aren't very expensive. And if they ran short, they
could make their own way for part of the time, you know. Why don't you
just divide the money you have now among the seven kids?"
"I can see I'm not explaining this so good," Nils said. "But they're
my kids, Captain, and I want to do it right for each of them in my own
way." The image of Eric--the oldest and his favorite--came into his
mind, and his eyes grew warm and moist.
"Yes, I understand that, Nils, but--"
"No, Sir, you don't understand. I have a dream, and I'm just about
to have it come true. You can't make me stop short now and change the
dream." He wanted to go on, but the words would not come to him.
"Well," Captain Davis said, more seriously now, "maybe you are right."
He nodded, soberly. "Nils, you've been on Uranus about six Earth
months, now. The doctor says you shouldn't take even one more plunge.
It's hard work, and it's a strain, and you're wearing out. You're
wearing out gradually--but still faster, much faster, than a man would
on Earth, no matter what he did. But this isn't something that just
happened yesterday, Nils; it's been going on since you got here. You
were lucky we let you sign on, close as you were to the age limit. Who
can say when you finally crossed the danger line? Maybe a month, maybe
two months ago. You've been on borrowed time since then, whenever it
was. You shouldn't have taken that plunge yesterday, or perhaps the
last fifty plunges. Do you realize that?"
"I guess so."
"And we're doing you a favor. Instead of gambling with your life, you
can knock off now, take your thirty thousand dollars, and call yourself
the winner."
"Captain, I don't care what you say. It's my dream, and I want to get
that seventh lion."
"Nils, you're a stubborn cuss. All right. But the minute you get that
lion on your harpoon, we're hauling you up."
Nils grinned happily. "That's a deal," he said.
And so Erskine took Nils back down to the raft.
* * * * *
On Uranus there is no sense trying to make a man adapt to any of the
natural divisions of time there, such as the rotation of the moons
or the position of the sun; and as long as man is attuned to the
artificial twenty-four hour day anyway, that is the most convenient
unit of time. You have sixteen hours to yourself, for whatever you want
to do--sleeping, reading, playing the visitapes, or anything else that
strikes your fancy in the limited space of the air bubble, half of
which is always dark and the other half always light.
But the other eight hours belong to the company. For six of them you
man the pumps or the radio equipment or the cable drum while the other
men plunge, and you make your plunges in the other two.
When Nils went on duty that day, he was on the radio, and Kerr was
down below. The optimism he had felt after his talk with the captain
was dissipated. He realized that, after all, the air lions were a
disappearing species. He had been here hunting them for six months and
had bagged only six. One a month--yet that was the best record of any
of the men. And here he was, expecting to get his seventh in the next
day or so.
Kerr was calling for more cable. Nils reassured him absently and
signaled the crew at the drum.