Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had a visitor when he
reached the Red Lion that evening. He had no stomach for mysteries, vast
or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time.
Yet the doorman had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A
thousand pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no name. He
said you’d want to see him. He will be back by eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring about the quiet
lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the Red Lion, gently but
persuasively; the patrons were few in number. Across to the right was a
group that Baron knew vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them
were. Over near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped the
first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron returned his
smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the
intruder who demanded his time without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat down at Baron’s
table. He was short and wiry. His face held no key to his age—he might
have been thirty or a thousand—but he looked weary and immensely ugly.
His cheeks and forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were
still healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re planning to
attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read telecasts,” he
said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going to make a Brightside
Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment without expression.
Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re not going to make the
Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney? _Peter_ Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger gone. “Great
balls of fire, man—_where have you been hiding?_ We’ve been trying to
contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My friend, we’d
given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking. Here, have a drink. There’s
so much you can tell us.” His fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you want to
hear.”
“But you’ve _got_ to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s attempted a
Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the story you cleared for
the news—it was nothing. We need _details_. Where did your equipment
fall down? Where did you miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?”
Baron jabbed a finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve got to know
those things. If you can tell us, we can make it across where your
attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We _have_ to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t do it and
neither can you. No human beings will ever cross the Brightside alive,
not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You can blame the
equipment or the men—there were flaws in both quarters—but we just
didn’t know what we were fighting. It was the _planet_ that whipped us,
that and the _Sun_. They’ll whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
* * * * *
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as I can
remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when Wyatt and Carpenter
made the last attempt—that was in 2082, I think. I followed the news
stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just
disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper
equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface conditions, without
any charts—they couldn’t have made a hundred miles—but I didn’t know
that then and it was a terrible tragedy. After that, I followed
Sanderson’s work in the Twilight Lab up there and began to get
Brightside into my blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever know Tom
Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American. He
was a major in the Interplanetary Service for some years and hung onto
the title after he gave up his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days, did a good deal
of the original mapping and surveying for the Colony there. I first met
him on Venus; we spent five years together up there doing some of the
nastiest exploring since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on
Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of
guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone
else and always knew what to do in a tight place. Too many men in this
game are all nerve and luck, with no judgment. The Major had both. He
also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand miles of
Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at first. We spent an
evening here at the Red Lion, talking about old times; he told me about
the Vulcan business, and how he’d been out to see Sanderson and the
Twilight Lab on Mercury, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one
any day of the year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on you, at any
rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean _real_ heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.