Destiny reached out a hand to Algernon Weaver--but he
was a timid man, at first. But on the strange world of
Terranova, there was much to be learned--of destiny,
and other things....
It was a very different thing, Algernon Weaver decided, actually to
travel in space. When you read about it, or thought about it in terms of
what you read, it was more a business of going from one name to another.
Algol to Sirius. Aldebaran to Epsilon Ceti. You read the names, and the
descriptions that went with them, and the whole thing--although
breathtaking in concept, of course, when you really stopped to
_meditate_ on it--became rather ordinary and prosaic and somehow more
understandable.
Not that he had ever approved. No. He had that, at least, to look back
upon; he had seen the whole enterprise as pure presumption, and had said
so. Often. The heavens were the heavens, and Earth was Earth. It would
have been better--_much_ better for all concerned--if it had been left
that way.
He had held that opinion, he reminded himself gratefully, from the very
beginning, when it was easy to think otherwise. Afterward, of
course--when the first star ships came back with the news that space
was aswarm with creatures who did not even resemble Man, and had never
heard of him, and did not think much of him when they saw him.... Well,
who but an idiot could hold any other opinion?
If only the Creator had not seen fit to make so many human beings in His
image but without His common sense....
Well, if He hadn't then for one thing, Weaver would not have been where
he was now, staring out an octagonal porthole at an endless sea of
diamond-pierced blackness, with the empty ship humming to itself all
around him.
* * * * *
It was an entirely different thing, he told himself; there were no
names, and no descriptions, and no feeling of going from one known place
to another known place. It was more like--
It was like standing outdoors, on a still summer night, and looking up
at the dizzying depths of the stars. And then looking down, to discover
that there was no planet under your feet--and that you were all alone in
that alien gulf....
It was enough to make a grown man cry; and Weaver had cried, often, in
the empty red twilight of the ship, feeling himself hopelessly and
forever cut off, cast out and forgotten. But as the weeks passed, a kind
of numbness had overtaken him, till now, when he looked out the porthole
at the incredible depth of sky, he felt no emotion but a thin,
disapproving regret.
Sometimes he would describe himself to himself, just to refute the
feeling that he was not really here, not really alive. But his mind was
too orderly, and the description would come out so cold and
terse--"Algernon James Weaver (1942- ) historian, civic leader, poet,
teacher, philosopher. Author of _Development of the School System in
Schenectady and Scoharie Counties, New York_ (pamphlet, 1975); _An
Address to the Women's Clubs of Schenectady, New York_ (pamphlet, 1979);
_Rhymes of a Philosopher_ (1981); _Parables of a Philosopher_ (1983),
_Reflections of a Philosopher_ (1986). Born in Detroit, Michigan, son of
a Methodist minister; educated in Michigan and New York public schools;
B.A., New York State University, 1959; M.A., N.Y.S.U. Extension, 1964.
Unmarried. Surviving relatives--"
That was the trouble, it began to sound like an obituary. And then the
great humming metal shell would begin to feel like a coffin....
[Illustration]
Presumption. Pure presumption. None of these creatures should have been
allowed to get loose among the stars, Man least of all. It cluttered
up the Universe. It undermined Faith. And it had got Algernon Weaver
into the devil of a fix.
* * * * *
It was his sister's fault, actually. She would go, in spite of his
advice, up to the Moon, to the UN sanatorium in Aristarchus. Weaver's
sister, a big-framed, definite woman, had a weak heart and seventy-five
superfluous pounds of fat. Doctors had told her that she would live
twenty years longer on the Moon; therefore she went, and survived the
trip, and thrived in the germ-free atmosphere, weighing just one-sixth
of her former two hundred and ten pounds.
Once, she was there, Weaver could hardly escape visiting her. Harriet
was a widow, with large resources, and Weaver was her only near
relative. It was necessary, it was prudent, for him to keep on her good
side. Moreover, he had his family feeling.
He did not like it, not a minute of it. Not the incredible trip, rising
till the Earth lay below like a botched model of itself; not the silent
mausoleum of the Moon. But he duly admired Harriet's spacious room in
the sanatorium, the recreation rooms, the auditorium; space-suited, he
walked with her in the cold Earthlight; he attended her on the excursion
trip to Ley Field, the interstellar rocket base on the far side of the
Moon.
The alien ship was there, all angles and planes--it came from Zeta
Aurigae, they told him, and was the second foreign ship to visit Sol.
Most of the crew had been ferried down to Earth, where they were
inspecting the people (without approval, Weaver was sure). Meanwhile,
the remaining crewman would be pleased to have the sanatorium party
inspect _him_.
* * * * *
They went aboard, Harriet and two other women, and six men counting the
guide and Weaver. The ship was a red-lit cavern. The "crewman" turned
out to be a hairy horror, a three-foot headless lump shaped like an
eggplant, supported by four splayed legs and with an indefinite number
of tentacles wriggling below the stalked eyes.
"They're more like us than you'd think," said the guide. "They're
mammals, they have a nervous organization very like ours, they're
susceptible to some of our diseases--which is very rare--and they even
share some of our minor vices." He opened his kit and offered the thing
a plug of chewing tobacco, which was refused with much tentacle-waving,
and a cigar, which was accepted. The creature stuck the cigar into the
pointed tip of its body, just above the six beady black eyes, lit it
with some sort of flameless lighter, and puffed clouds of smoke like a
volcano.
"--And of course, as you see, they're oxygen breathers," the guide
finished. "The atmosphere in the ship here is almost identical to our
own--we could breathe it without any discomfort whatever."
_Then why don't we?_ Weaver thought irritably. He had been forced to
wear either a breathing mask or a pressure suit all the time he had been
on the Moon, except when he had been in his own sealed room at the
sanatorium. And his post-nasal drip was unmistakably maturing into a
cold; he had been stifling sneezes for the last half hour.
He was roused by a commotion up ahead; someone was on the floor, and the
others were crowding around. "Help me carry her," said the guide's voice
sharply in his earphones. "We can't treat her here. What is she, a heart
case?... Good Lord. Clear the way there, will you?"
Weaver hurried up, struck by a sharp suspicion. Indeed, it was Harriet
who was being carried out--and a good thing, he thought, that they
didn't have to support her full weight. He wondered vaguely if she would
die before they got her to a doctor. He could not give the thought his
full attention, or feel as much fraternal anxiety as he ought, because--
He had ... he _had_ to sneeze.
* * * * *
The others had crowded out into the red-lit space of the control room,
where the airlock was. Weaver stopped and frantically tugged his arm
free of the rubberoid sleeve. The repressed spasm was an acute agony in
his nose and throat. He fumbled the handkerchief out of his pocket,
thrust his hand up under the helmet--and blissfully let go.
His eyes were watering. He wiped them hurriedly, put the handkerchief
away, worked his arm back into the sleeve, and looked around to see what
had become of the others.
The airlock door was closed, and there was no one in the room but the
hairy eggplant shape of the Aurigean, still puffing its cigar.
"Hey!" said Weaver, forgetting his manners. The Aurigean did not
turn--but then, which was its front, or back? The beady black eyes
regarded him without expression.
Weaver started forward. He got nearly to the airlock before a cluster of
hairy tentacles barred his way. He said indignantly, "Let me out, you
monster. Let me out, do you hear?"
The creature stood stock-still in an infuriating attitude until a little
light on the wall changed from orange to red-violet. Then it crossed to
the control board, did something there, and the inner door of the lock
swung open.
"Well, I should think so!" said Weaver. He stepped forward again--But
his eyes were beginning to water. There was an intolerable tickling far
back in his nostrils. He was going to--he was--
Eyes squeezed shut, his whole body contorted with effort, he raised his
arm to begin the desperate race once more. His hand brushed against
something--his kit, slung just above his waist. There were handkerchiefs
in the kit, he recalled suddenly. And he remembered what the guide had
said about Aurigean air.
He tugged the kit open, fumbled and found a handkerchief. He zipped open
the closure of his helmet and tilted the helmet back. He brought up the
handkerchief, and gave himself over to the spasm.
* * * * *
He was startled by a hoarse boom, as if someone had scraped the strings
of an amplified bull fiddle. He looked around, blinking, and discovered
that the sound was coming from the Aurigean. The monster, with its
tentacles tightly curled around the tip of its body, was scuttling into
the corridor. As Weaver watched in confusion, it vanished, and a sheet
of metal slid across the doorway.
More boomings came shortly from a source Weaver finally identified as a
grille over the control panels. He took a step that way, then changed
his mind and turned back toward the airlock.
Just as he reached the nearer airlock door, the farther one swung open
and an instant torrent of wind thrust him outward.
Strangling, Weaver grabbed desperately at the door-frame as it went by.
He swung with a sickening thud into the inner wall, but he hung on and
pulled himself back inside.
The force of the wind was dropping rapidly; so was the air pressure.
Ragged black blotches swam before Weaver's eyes. He fumbled with his
helmet, trying to swing it back over his head; but it stubbornly
remained where it was. The blow when he struck the airlock wall, he
thought dimly--it must have bent the helmet so that it would not fit
into its grooves.
He forced himself across the room, toward the faint gleam of the
Aurigean control board--shaped like a double horseshoe it was, around
the two lattice-topped stools, and bristling with levers, knobs and
sliding panels. One of these, he knew, controlled the airlock. He
slapped blindly at them, pulling, pushing, turning as many as he could
reach. Then the floor reeled under him, and, as he fell toward it,
changed into a soft gray endless mist....
* * * * *
When he awoke, the airlock door was closed. His lungs were gratefully
full of air. The Aurigean was nowhere to be seen; the door behind which
he had disappeared was still closed.
Weaver got up, stripped off his spacesuit, and, by hammering with the
sole of one of the boots, managed to straighten out the dent in the back
of the helmet. He put the suit back on, then looked doubtfully at the
control board. It wouldn't do to go on pulling things at random; he
might cause some damage. Tentatively, he pushed a slide he remembered
touching before. When nothing happened, he pushed it back. He tried a
knob, then a lever.
The inner door of the airlock swung open.
Weaver marched into it, took one look through the viewport set in the
outer door, and scrambled back out. He closed the airlock again, and
thought a minute.
In the center of each horseshoe curve of the control board was a gray
translucent disk, with six buttons under it. They might, Weaver thought,
be television screens. He pressed the first button under one of them,
and the screen lighted up. He pressed the second button, then all the
others in turn.
They all showed him the same thing--the view he had seen from the
viewport in the airlock: stars, and nothing but stars.
The Moon, incredibly, had disappeared. He was in space.
* * * * *
His first thought, when he was able to think connectedly again, was to
find the Aurigean and make him put things right. He tried all the
remaining knobs and levers and buttons on the control board, reckless of
consequences, until the door slid open again. Then he went down the
corridor and found the Aurigean.
The creature was lying on the floor, with a turnip-shaped thing over its
head, tubes trailing from it to an opened cabinet in the wall. It was
dead--dead and decaying.
He searched the ship. He found storerooms, with cylinders and bales of
stuff that looked as if it might possibly be food; he found the engine
room, with great piles of outlandishly sculptured metal and winking
lights and swinging meter needles. But he was the only living thing on
board.
The view from all six directions--in the control room telescreens, and
in the ship's direct-view ports alike--was exactly the same. The stars,
like dandruff on Weaver's blue serge suit. No one of them, apparently,
any nearer than the others. No way to tell which, if any of them, was
his own.
The smell of the dead creature was all through the ship. Weaver closed
his helmet against it; then, remembering that the air in his suit tank
would not last forever, he lugged the corpse out to the airlock, closed
the inner door on it, and opened the outer one.
It was hard for him to accept the obvious explanation of the Aurigean's
death, but he finally came to it. He recalled something the guide had
said about the Aurigeans' susceptibility to Earthly infections. That
must have been it. That had been why the creature had bellowed and run
to seal itself off from him. It was all his fault.
If he had not sneezed with his helmet open, the Aurigean would not be
dead. He would not be marooned in space. And the other Aurigeans, down
on Earth, would not be marooned there. Though they, he decided
wistfully, would probably get home sooner or later. They knew where home
was.
* * * * *
As far as he could, he made himself master of the ship and its contents.
He discovered, by arduous trial and error, which of the supposed foods
in the storerooms he could eat safely, which would make him sick, and
which were not foods at all. He found out which of the control board's
knobs and levers controlled the engines, and he shut them off. He
studied the universe around him, hoping to see some change.
After nearly a month, it happened. One star grew from a brilliant
pinpoint to a tiny disk, and each time he awoke it was larger.
Weaver took counsel with himself, and pasted a small piece of
transparent red tape over the place on the telescreen where the star
appeared. He scratched a mark to show where the star was on each of
three succeeding "days." The trail crawled diagonally down toward the
bottom of the screen.
He knew nothing about astrogation; but he knew that if he were heading
directly toward the star, it ought to stay in the same place on his
screen. He turned on the engines and swung the steering arm downward.
The star crawled toward the center of the screen, then went past. Weaver
painstakingly brought it back; and so, in parsec-long zigzags, he held
his course.
The star was now increasing alarmingly in brightness. It occurred to
Weaver that he must be traveling with enormous speed, although he had no
sensation of movement at all. There was a position on the scale around
the steering arm that he thought would put the engines into reverse. He
tried it, and now he scratched the apparent size of the star into the
red tape. First it grew by leaps and bounds, then more slowly, then
hardly at all. Weaver shut off the engines again, and waited.
The star had planets. He noted their passage in the telescreen, marked
their apparent courses, and blithely set himself to land on the one that
seemed to be nearest. He was totally ignorant of orbits; he simply
centered his planet on the screen as he had done with the star, found
that it was receding from him, and began to run it down.
He came in too fast the first time--tore through the atmosphere like a
lost soul and frantically out again, sweating in the control room's
sudden heat. He turned, out in space, and carefully adjusted his speed
so that ship and planet drifted softly together. Gently, as if he had
been doing this all his life. Weaver took the ship down upon a continent
of rolling greens and browns, landed it without a jar--saw the landscape
begin to tilt as he stepped into the airlock, and barely got outside
before the ship rolled ten thousand feet down a gorge he had not noticed
and smashed itself into a powdering of fragments.
Two days later, he began turning into a god.