"Hey, looka me. I'm flying!"
"Will you get your big fat feet out of my face?"
"Sure. Show me how to swim away through air, I'll be glad to."
"Leggo that spoon!"
"I ain't got your spoon."
"Will you look at it float away. Hey spoon, hey!"
"Watch this, Charlie. This will get you. I mean, get you."
"What are you gonna do?"
"Relax, chum."
"Leggo my leg. Help! I'm up in the air. Stop that."
"I said relax. There. Ha-ha, lookit him spin, just like a top. All you
got to do is get him started and he spins like a top with arms and
legs. Top of the morning to you, Charlie. Ha-ha. I said, top of the...."
"Someone stop me, I'm getting dizzy."
They floated, tumbled, spun around the spaceship's lounge room in
simple, childish glee. They cavorted in festive weightlessness.
"They're happy now," Arkalion observed. "The novelty of free fall, of
weighing exactly nothing, strikes them as amusing."
"I think I'm getting the hang of it," said Temple. Clumsily, he made a
few tentative swimming motions in the air, propelling himself forward
a few yards before he lost his balance and tumbled head over heels
against the wall.
Arkalion came to him quickly, in a combination of swimming and pushing
with hands and feet against the wall. Arkalion righted him expertly,
sat down gingerly beside him. "If you keep sudden motions to a minimum,
you'll get along fine. More than anything else, that's the secret of
it."
Temple nodded. "It's sort of like the first time you're on ice skates.
Say, how come you're so good at it?"
"I used to read the old, theoretical books on space-travel." The words
poured out effortlessly, smoothly. "I'm merely applying the theories
put forward as early as the 1950's."
"Oh." But it left Temple with some food for thought. Alaric Arkalion
was a queer duck, anyway, and of all the men gathered in the
spaceship's lounge, he alone had mastered weightlessness with hardly
any trouble.
"Take your ice skates," Arkalion went on. "Some people put them on and
use them like natural extensions of their feet the first time. Others
fall all over themselves. I suppose I am lucky."
"Sure," said Temple. Actually, the only thing odd about Arkalion was
his old-young face and--perhaps--his propensity for coming up with
the right answers at the right times. Arkalion had seemed so certain
of space-travel. He'd hardly batted an eyelash when they boarded a
long, tapering bullet-shaped ship at White Sands and thundered off
into the sky. He took for granted the change-over to a huge round ship
at the wheel-shaped station in space. Moments after leaving the space
station--with a minimum of stress and strain, thanks to the almost-nil
gravity--it was Arkalion who first swam through air to the viewport
and pointed out the huge crescent earth, green and gray and brown,
sparkling with patches of dazzling silver-white. "You will observe it
is a crescent," Arkalion had said. "It is closer to the sun than we
are, and off at an angle. As I suspected, our destination is Mars."
* * * * *
Then everyone was saying goodbye to earth. Fantastic, it seemed. There
were tears, there was laughter, cursing, promises of return, awkward
verbal comparisons with the crescent moon, vows of faithfulness to
lovers and sweethearts. And there was Arkalion, with an avid expression
in the old eyes, Arkalion with his boyish face, not saying goodbye so
much as he was calling hello to something Temple could not fathom.
Now, as he struggled awkwardly with weightlessness, Temple called
it his imagination. His thought-patterns shifted vaguely, without
motivation, from the gleaming, polished interior of the ship with its
smell of antiseptic and metal polish to the clear Spring air of Earth,
blue of sky and bright of sun. The unique blue sky of Earth which he
somehow knew could not be duplicated elsewhere. Elsewhere--the word
itself bordered on the meaningless.
And Stephanie. The brief warm ecstasy of her--once, forever. He
wondered with surprising objectivity if a hundred other names, a
hundred other women were not in a hundred other minds while everyone
stared at the crescent Earth hanging serenely in space--with each name
and each woman as dear as Stephanie, with the same combination of fire
and gentle femininity stirring the blood but saddening the heart.
Would Stephanie really forget him? Did he want her to? That part of
him burned by the fire of her said no--no, she must not forget him.
She was his, his alone, roped and branded though a universe separated
them. But someplace in his heart was the thought, the understanding,
the realization that although Stephanie might keep a small place for
him tucked someplace deep in her emotions, she must forget. He was
gone--permanently. For Stephanie, he was dead. It was as he had told
her that last stolen day. It was ... _Stephanie, Stephanie, how much I
love you_....
Struggling with weightlessness, he made his way back to the small room
he shared with Arkalion. Hardly more than a cubicle, it was, with
sufficient room for two beds, a sink, a small chest. He lay down and
slept, murmuring Stephanie's name in his sleep.
* * * * *
He awoke to the faint hum of the air-pumps, got up feeling rested,
forgot his weightlessness and floated to the ceiling where only an
outthrust arm prevented a nasty bump on his head. He used hand grips on
the wall to let himself down. He washed, aware of no way to prevent the
water he splashed on his face from forming fine droplets and spraying
the entire room. When he crossed back to the foot of his bed to get his
towel he thrust one foot out too rapidly, lost his balance, half-rose,
stumbled and fell against the other bed which, like all other items of
furniture, was fastened to the floor. But his elbow struck sleeping
Arkalion's jaw sharply, hard enough to jar the man's teeth.
"I'm sorry," said Temple. "Didn't mean to do that," he apologized
again, feeling embarrassed.
Arkalion merely lay there.
"I said I'm sorry."
Arkalion still slept. It seemed inconceivable, for Temple's elbow
pained him considerably. He bent down, examined his inert companion.
Arkalion stirred not a muscle.
Vaguely alarmed, Temple thrust a hand to Arkalion's chest, felt
nothing. He crouched, rested the side of his head over Arkalion's
heart. He listened, heard--nothing.
What was going on here?
"Hey, Arkalion!" Temple shook him, gently at first, then with savage
force. Weightless, Arkalion's body floated up off the bed, taking the
covers with it. His own heart pounding furiously, Temple got it down
again, fingered the left wrist and swallowed nervously.
Temple had never seen a dead man before. Arkalion's heart did not beat.
Arkalion had no pulse.
Arkalion was dead.
Yelling hoarsely, Temple plunged from the room, soaring off the floor
in his haste and striking his head against the ceiling hard enough to
make him see stars. "This guy is dead!" he cried. "Arkalion is dead."
Men stirred in the companionway. Someone called for one of the armed
guards who were constantly on patrol.
"If he's dead, you're yelling loud enough to get him out of his grave."
The voice was quiet, amused.
Arkalion.
"What?" Temple blurted, whirling around and striking his head again. A
little wild-eyed, he re-entered the room.
"Now, who is dead, Kit?" demanded Arkalion, sitting up and stretching
comfortably.
"Who--is dead? Who--?" Open-mouthed, Temple stared.
A guard, completely at home with weightlessness, entered the cubicle
briskly. "What's the trouble in here? Something about a dead man, they
said."
"A dead man?" demanded Arkalion. "Indeed."
"Dead?" muttered Temple, lamely and foolishly. "Dead...."
Arkalion smiled deprecatingly. "My friend must have been talking in
his sleep. The only thing dead in here is my appetite. Weightlessness
doesn't let you become very hungry."
"You'll grow used to it," the guard promised. He patted his paunch
happily. "I am. Well, don't raise the alarm unless there's some
trouble. Remember about the boy who cried wolf."
"Of course," said Temple. "Sure. Sorry."
He watched the guard depart.
"Bad dream?" Arkalion wanted to know.
"Bad dream, my foot. I accidentally hit you. Hard enough to hurt. You
didn't move."
"I'm a sound sleeper."
"I felt for your heart. It wasn't beating. It wasn't!"
"Oh, come, come."
"Your heart was not beating, I said."
"And I suppose I was cold as a slab of ice?"
"Umm, no. I don't remember. Maybe you were. You had no pulse, either."
Arkalion laughed easily. "And am I still dead?"
"Well--"
"Clearly a case of overwrought nerves and a highly keyed imagination.
What you need is some more sleep."
"I'm not sleepy, thanks."
"Well, I think I'll get up and go down for breakfast." Arkalion climbed
out of bed gingerly, made his way to the sink and was soon gargling
with a bottle of prepared mouthwash, occasionally spraying weightless
droplets of the pink liquid up at the ceiling.
Temple lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, made his way to Arkalion's
bed while the man hummed tunelessly at the sink. Temple let his hands
fall on the sheet. It was not cold, but comfortably cool. Hardly as
warm as it should have been, with a man sleeping on it all night.
Was he still imagining things?
"I'm glad you didn't call for a burial detail and have me expelled into
space with yesterday's garbage," Arkalion called over his shoulder
jauntily as he went outside for some breakfast.
Temple cursed softly and lit another cigarette, dropping the first one
into a disposal chute on the wall.
* * * * *
Every night thereafter, Temple made it a point to remain awake after
Arkalion apparently had fallen asleep. But if he were seeking
repetition of the peculiar occurrence, he was disappointed. Not only
did Arkalion sleep soundly and through the night, but he snored. Loudly
and clearly, a wheezing snore.
Arkalion's strange feat--or his own overwrought imagination, Temple
thought wryly--was good for one thing: it took his mind off Stephanie.
The days wore on in endless, monotonous routine. He took some books
from the ship's library and browsed through them, even managing to find
one concerned with traumatic catalepsy, which stated that a severe
emotional shock might render one into a deep enough trance to have a
layman mistakenly pronounce him dead. But what had been the severe
emotional disturbance for Arkalion? Could the effects of weightlessness
manifest themselves in that way in rare instances? Temple naturally did
not know, but he resolved to find out if he could after reaching their
destination.
One day--it was three weeks after they left the space station, Temple
realized--they were all called to assembly in the ship's large main
lounge. As the men drifted in, Temple was amazed to see the progress
they had made with weightlessness. He himself had advanced to handy
facility in locomotion, but it struck him all the more pointedly when
he saw two hundred men swim and float through air, pushing themselves
along by means of the hand-holds strategically placed along the walls.
The ever-present microphone greeted them all. "Good afternoon, men."
"Good afternoon, mac!"
"Hey, is this the way to Ebbetts' Field?"
"Get on with it!"
"Sounds like the same man who addressed us in White Sands," Temple told
Arkalion. "He sure does get around."
"A recording, probably. Listen."
"Our destination, as you've probably read in newspapers and magazines,
is the planet Mars."
Mutterings in the assembly, not many of surprise.
"Their suppositions, based both on the seven hundred eighty day lapse
between Nowhere Journeys and the romantic position in which the planet
Mars has always been held, are correct. We are going to Mars.
"For most of you, Mars will be a permanent home for many years to
come--"
"Most of us?" Temple wondered out loud.
Arkalion raised a finger to his lips for silence.
"--until such time as you are rotated according to the policy of
rotation set up by the government."
Temple had grown accustomed to the familiar hoots and catcalls. He
almost had an urge to join in himself.
"Interesting," Arkalion pointed out. "Back at White Sands they claimed
not to know our destination. They knew it all right--up to a point. The
planet Mars. But now they say that all of us will not remain on Mars.
Most interesting."
"--further indoctrination in our mission soon after our arrival on the
red planet. Landing will be performed under somewhat less strain than
the initial takeoff in the Earth-to-station ferry, since Mars exerts
less of a gravity pull than Earth. On the other hand, you have been
weightless for three weeks and the change-over is liable to make some
of you sick. It will pass harmlessly enough.
"We realize it is difficult, being taken from your homes without
knowing the nature of your urgent mission. All I can tell you now--and,
as a matter of fact, all I know--"
"Here we go again," said Temple. "More riddles."
"--is that everything _is_ of the utmost urgency. Our entire way of
life is at stake. Our job will be to safeguard it. In the months which
follow, few of you will have any big, significant role to play, but all
of you, working together, will provide the strength we need. When the
_cadre_--"
"So they call their guards teachers," Arkalion commented dryly.
"--come around, they will see that each man is strapped properly into
his bunk for deceleration. Deceleration begins in twenty-seven minutes."
_Mars_, thought Temple, back in his room with Arkalion. _Mars._ He did
not think of Stephanie, except as a man who knows he must spend the
rest of his life in prison might think of a lush green field, or the
cool swish of skis over fresh, powdery snow, or the sound of yardarms
creaking against the wind on a small sailing schooner, or the tang of
wieners roasting over an open fire with the crisp air of fall against
your back, or the scent of good French brandy, or a woman.
Deceleration began promptly. Before his face was distorted and his eyes
forced shut by a pressure of four gravities, Temple had time to see the
look of complete unconcern on Arkalion's face. Arkalion, in fact, was
sleeping.
He seemed as completely relaxed as he did that morning Temple thought
he was dead.