_Planet Shift_
I stared at him uneasily. He was talking like an idiot. I knew that
Jupiter itself would have to dwindle to a small disk before Callisto
could become a pin point of light. When you take off from a little moon
the glare of its primary magnifies its surface features. For about one
hour Callisto would look like a black orchid dwindling in a blaze of
light. Then it would whip away into emptiness to reappear as a glowing
dot.
"Jupiter looks funny too!" Pete muttered. "Mighty funny! Like a big
slice o' yellow cheese with golden bands around it, spreadin' out--"
That did it! I got up and walked to the viewpane, slapping my hands
together explosively. I had to let off steam in some way. My steadiness
surprised me. My eyelids felt a little heavy, but there was nothing
wrong with my space legs.
When I started out I didn't see the red gnat. But I saw something else,
something that gave me a tremendous shock. What I saw was a great
ringed planet swimming in a golden haze!
When I turned my face must have given Pete a jolt. He gulped so hard I
was afraid he'd swallow his Adam's apple and choke on the rind.
"What is it, Jim?" he asked huskily. "You look like you'd seen a ghost!"
I laughed without amusement. "I did! A ghost planet! And we're not
moving away from it! It's getting larger!"
Pete stared. "Sure you feel okay, son?"
"Not too good!" I said, looking him straight in the eye. "Take another
look!"
I gestured toward the viewpane. "Go on! See for yourself!"
Pete stood for a long time with his face pressed to the pane, his
shoulders hunched. I thought he was never going to turn.
A crazy thought flashed through my mind. I'd seen men in a state of
collapse on their feet, their faces blanched, unable to move or speak.
Had Pete been shocked speechless?
I was sweating as he turned. His face was blanched, all right, but he
could speak, and did!
"I've got to sit down, Jim!" he choked out.
He reeled to the bulkhead chronometer, sat down and started tugging at
his chin. After a moment he whipped his hand from his face.
"You're an educated man, Jim," he said. "I'm not! If you tell me we're
headin' straight for Saturn, I won't call you a liar!"
"You won't?"
"No, Jim. Say a guy brings you a watch. The hands go in the wrong
direction, the tickin's so loud it drives you nuts. 'Buddy,' he says,
'if you want to know what time it isn't, this watch will tell you.'
"Well, say you've got to know the time, say your life depends on it.
What do you do, Jim? Lift him up by his seat and toss him out the door?
Shucks, no! You listen while he talks. You ask him to take the watch
apart and show you what makes it tick."
"Fine!" I said. "So I'm the man with the watch! I put Saturn outside
the viewpane just to torture you!"
He looked so miserable I felt sorry for him. "I didn't mean it that
way, Jim," he apologized. "But I'm plumb scared! Somethin's happenin'
to space! Somethin' ghastly awful! You must have some idea what's
causin' it!"
"Don't kid yourself!" I told him. "A wild guess isn't an idea."
"Let me be the judge o' that, son!"
"Well--all right. Maybe we're seeing Saturn as a magnified
image--through some kind of magnifying space drift. A big, floating
lens in space, made up of refractive particles spread out in a cloud. A
lens with more magnifying power than the five-hundred inch! It isn't as
haywire as it sounds, if that's any comfort to you!"
"But no pilot's ever seen anything like that, Jim!" Pete protested,
with unanswerable logic.
He tapped his brow. "It could be in here, Jim! That's what I'm afraid
of! A sickness of the mind--"
"Don't start that!" I warned, striking my knee with my fist. "Don't
even think it!"
My voice was getting out of control. I was yelling at him, and there
was no reason for it.
He had every right to his opinion.
"What are we goin' to do, Jim?"
"Check up first!" I snapped. "If I have to use every instrument on the
ship--"
* * * * *
I stopped. The door into the pilot room had opened and closed, and a
clumping figure was coming toward us across the deck.
I heard Pete suck in his breath. I couldn't seem to draw a deep breath.
There was a physical quality of eeriness in the sight which took me by
the throat.
The figure was wearing a light spacesuit, vacuum-sealed at the neck. A
transparent headpiece bulged out above the flexible garment, a great
glistening globe encasing the head of the most beautiful woman I'd ever
seen.
Her hair was piled in a tumbled mass of gold on her head and there was
a delicate flush on her skin, visible through the glowing sphere. She
was staring at me without seeming to see me, her cheeks shadowed by
long, convex lashes.
Some women mature into loveliness; others have it thrust upon them.
I didn't tell myself that straight off. I was too stunned to make
up pretty speeches. But later I realized that her hair, eyes, and
complexion were as near perfect as they could be without looking
artificial.
Her suit was cumbersome, and it weighed her down. But there was
something weird, spine-chilling about the way she moved. She walked
with a smooth flow of motion, almost as if she were skating across the
deck.
I was a little afraid of what Pete might do. He was shaking with
excitement, and I could see that he was keyed up to a dangerous pitch.
Doubting his own sanity and mine to boot!
But I wasn't going to be stampeded into fear! I'd been under a
tremendous strain, sure. But I knew a flesh-and-blood woman when I saw
one! The girl was real! The pulse beating in her forehead was real and
so were her eyes and hair! We hadn't made even a cursory search of the
ship. There were plenty of dark little corners where she could have
concealed herself.
Suddenly I saw that she'd glided past Pete and was facing away from us,
her hands extended toward the control board. A little to the left of
the board there was a dull flickering on the bulkhead.
For an instant I mistook the weird glimmer for a shadow cast by her
swaying shoulders. I thought she was just reaching for the board to
steady herself.
Then I saw her hands moving on the board and knew that a gravity panel
was swinging open on the void! I leapt toward her with a warning cry.
If she heard me she gave no sign. You can hear a shout through a thin
helmet, but she didn't even turn. She just darted sideways and then
forward--straight through the panel into the utter black emptiness of
space! A flash of light--and she was gone!
The panel closed so soundlessly you could have heard a pin drop.
I had trouble with my breath again. For an instant my throat had an
iron brace around it. Then I remembered that she hadn't gone out
unprotected into the void. Her suit would keep the cold out, and the
magnetic suction disks on her wrists and knees would enable her to
cling to the hull, to crawl along it. But if she'd gone out to do a
repair job on the hull, she had the kind of courage you read about in
the Admiralty Reports.
If I had it, it was glazed over with a thick coating of ice. I stood
braced against the bulkhead, the old Adam in me chanting a hymn to
life, a hymn to the Sun, and feeling glad I wasn't in her shoes.
What a way for a guy to feel!
Then something happened to me. I saw her face again, deep in my mind,
and it seemed to be pleading with me. It wasn't just a pleading. There
was music and wonder in it!
I could hear the pound of surf on a golden beach, and the sun was
warming the sea and the air, and she was in my arms and I was kissing
her.
Then it was night and the palms were bending lower over us, and the
moonlight was so bright I could hardly see the web of radiance around
her head. But I could hear the rise and fall of paddles, and someone
singing far off over the water. We were running down the beach toward
the pounding surf. Water was glistening on her tanned arms and I could
hear her laughter.
Pete had leapt to his feet. He was staring at me, sweat standing out on
his forehead in great, shining beads.
"What did I tell you, son?" he groaned. "A sickness of the mind--"
His voice thickened, broke.
The terror in his stare made me realize how close to the brink I was.
His refusal to believe the evidence of his eyes was an attempt at
rationalization, but it wasn't a good attempt.
He was assuming the worst, taking his own madness for granted.
* * * * *
I grabbed him by both shoulders. "You're as sane as I am!" I yelled,
shaking him. "That girl was here when we took over! A stowaway! What's
so crazy about that?"
Pete's throat moved as he swallowed. "Let go of me, Jim! Believe what
you want! I'm going crazy--and tryin' to explain it won't stop it!"
"Common sense will stop it! Did you notice that vacuum suit she was
wearing? It's as ancient as the ship! It must have come out of the
ship's locker!"
Pete stared at me until I lost my head. "She's out on the hull alone!
You hear? Alone, in a suit that won't give her much protection! If her
irons slip she'll be done for! She's either stark staring mad or--"
My thoughts came so fast I had to stop. But my mind raced on. Was she
actually mad? Or had she crawled out of hiding to find herself in a
ship that was fast becoming a droning death trap?
A woman hiding in the dark, with her senses abnormally alert, would
be quick to get the awful feel of a ship about to fly asunder. She
wouldn't have to guess. She'd know!
A girl pilot? Well, why not? There were plenty of girl pilots working
their fingers to the bone to earn passage money in Callisto City.
Stowing away would be a short cut to freedom and the green hills of
Earth. You couldn't blame a girl for hating the dust and roar of an
atomic power plant, or the drudgery of a mining job.
I could picture her succumbing to blind panic, ripping a suit down from
the locker, and crawling out into the void to tighten the gravity bolts
on the naked hull with a magneto-wrench.
"Jeebies always try to kill themselves!" Pete croaked. "You get to
pitying them! Your head swells and you get all choked up with pity! And
that's when you know you've blown your top!"
I answered that with a voice that rang hard. "All right, have it your
own way! She's a jeebie! But I'm not going to stand here pitying her!
I'm going to help her!"
I never quite knew how I reached the locker, with imaginary eyes
glittering at me from every corner of the ship. Pete's wild talk hadn't
really shaken me. All loose talk about the mind is dangerous, of
course. But I wasn't scared of anything I couldn't see.
The idea of a haunted ship seemed silly to me. Almost laughable. But
I had to admit the ship had the feel of occupancy about it. I half
expected that a second helmeted figure would pop out of the shadows
before I could go to the aid of the first.
My palms were sweating as I struggled into a spacesuit that hadn't been
occupied for at least a century. There were five suits hanging in the
locker, and I picked the biggest one. It was a little too small for me,
but I couldn't complain much on that score. It kinked a little, then
drew tight over the shoulders, but nothing ripped when I moved.
* * * * *
I must have looked grotesque in that old, stiff, freakish garment, all
bulges and creases. A big flaring dome over my head, feet like metal
pancakes clattering on the deck.
But I wasn't concerned with my appearance, just my oxygen intake.
Back by the gravity panel, Pete tried desperately to stop me. His bony
hands went out, plucked at my wrists. I couldn't hear him babbling
outside the helmet. But I could see his shining eyes and moving lips.
His eyes were tortured, pleading.
He might as well have been pleading with a man a hundred miles away--or
a century dead!
I was deaf to reason. I was feeling merely a blind instinct to help a
woman who had taken on a man's job.
Pete's eyes followed me as I went clumping toward the control board,
and I felt a sudden tug of pity for him. If I never came back, he'd
miss me a lot. Good old Pete! To make him feel better I flashed him a
smile and waved him back.
"Sit down and relax, old-timer!" I said. "I'm just going out for a
little breath of fresh air!"
It was just as well he couldn't hear me. He was real touchy about
space. You had to treat it with respect. The lads who sailed the seas
of Terra before Pete started reaching for the stars with his little
pink hands had what it takes, and their lingo is the spaceman's lingo
still. But to Pete spacemen were a notch higher in every respect.
Nothing riled him more than loose talk about reading the weather by the
glass or taking a squint at the North Star. Or going out for a breather
on deck!
I thought of all that as I went out. Oh, Pete was a special character
if ever there was one.