[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_Phoenix I_ belled out smoothly in the region of a G-type star. There
was a bright flare as a few random hydrogen atoms were destroyed by the
ship's sudden appearance. One moment space had been empty except for
the few drifting atoms, and the next--the ship was there, squat and
ugly.
Inside, a bell chimed sweetly, signalling the return to a universe of
mass and gravitation and a limiting velocity called C. Colonel Richard
Harkins glanced briefly out his forward port, and saw no more than he
had expected to see.
At this distance the G-type star was no brighter or yellower than many
another he had seen. For a man it might have been hard to tell which
star it was. But the ship knew.
Within one of the ungainly bulges that sprouted along the length of
_Phoenix I_, a score of instruments mindlessly swung to focus their
receptors on the nearest body of star-mass.
Harkins leaned contentedly back in the padded control seat and watched
while the needles gradually found their final position on dials. A few
scattered lights bloomed on the console ahead of him. He grunted once
with satisfaction as the thermoneedle steadied at 6,000° C. After that
he was silent.
He leaned forward and flipped up two switches, and a faint sound of
a woodpecker came into the control room as the spectrograph punched
its data on a tape. The end of the tape began to come out of a slot.
Harkins tore it off when the spectrograph was finished with it,
threaded it on the feeder spool of the ship's calculator, and inserted
the free end in the input slot.
The calculator blinked once at him, as if surprised, and spat out a
little card with the single word SOL neatly printed in the center.
Harkins whistled softly to himself, happily. _I had a true wife but I
left her_, he whistled. Old song. Old when he first heard it. _Had a
true...._
He wondered vaguely what a "wife" was, but decided it probably didn't
matter. _Had a true wife but I left her_, he whistled.
He was glad to be home.
The direction finder gave him a fix on Earth and he tried to isolate
the unimportant star from the others in the same general direction, but
he couldn't do it, visually. The ship would do it, though, he wasn't
worried about that. He wished he could use the Skipdrive to get a
little closer. It would take a long time to get in close on the atomic
rockets. Several days, maybe.
Well, he had to do it. The Skipdrive wasn't dependable in mass-space.
You couldn't tell what it was going to do when you got it too close to
a large mass. He'd have to go in on the chemical.
_Mass-space_, he thought. _Molasses-space, I call it._
Too slow, everything too slow, that was the trouble.
Reluctantly he switched off the Skipdrive's complacent purr. The sudden
lack of noise in the cabin made him squint his eyes, and he thought he
was going to get a headache for some reason. Abruptly, all the cabin
furniture seemed very harsh and angular, distorted in some strange way
so as to be distinctly irritating to him. He brushed his foot across
the deck and the sound of his boot was rasping and annoying.
He didn't like this space much. It wasn't soft, it wasn't restful, it
was all full of clutter and junk. He grimaced with distaste at the
suddenly ugly console.
He looked down at the floor, frowning, pinching his nose between thumb
and forefinger, flirting with the idea of turning the drive back on.
But for some reason he couldn't quite think of at the moment, he
couldn't do that. He frowned more severely, but it didn't help; he
still couldn't think of the reason he couldn't do it. That headache was
coming on strong, now. He'd have to take something for it.
_Well, well_, he thought resignedly. _Home again, home again._
He was sure he was glad to be home.
_Home is the hunter, home from something something...._
He couldn't remember any of the rest. What the hell was a hunter,
anyway? They irritated him, these nonsense songs. He didn't know why he
kept thinking about them. Hunters and wifes. Nonsense. Babble.
He keyed the directional instruments into the course-control and armed
the starting charge for the chemical motors. When he had checked
everything carefully, as he had been taught, he strapped himself into
the control chair with his hand on the arm-rest over the firing button.
He knew it was going to hurt him.
He fired, and it did hurt him, the sense of explosive pressure, the
abrupt thundering vibration. It was not the same as the soft, enfolding
purr of the Skipdrive, comforting, assuring, loving....
_What's that? Loving?_
_A wife is a Martha_, he thought. _A Martha is a wife._
It seemed to mean something, but he didn't have time to decipher it
before he passed out.
* * * * *
When he came to he immediately switched off the chemical drive. It had
given him a good shove in the right direction, and that was all that
was necessary. He would coast in now, and he had to save his fuel for
maneuvering in atmosphere.
After that, he rested, trying to accustom himself to the harshness of
things in mass-space.
His time-to-destination indicator gave him ten hours, when he began to
feel uneasy. He couldn't pin-point the source of unease at first. He
was fidgety, impatient. Or something that resembled those feelings. It
was like when he couldn't remember why he wasn't supposed to turn the
Skipdrive back on. It occurred to him that he wasn't thinking clearly,
somehow.
He noticed to his surprise he had switched on his transmitter. Probably
while he was drumming his fingers or something. He switched it off.
Thirty minutes later he found himself toying with the same switch. He
had turned it on again. This was getting ridiculous. He shouldn't be so
nervous.
He grinned wryly to himself. The transmitter switch, indeed. If ever
a useless piece of junk had been put in _Phoenix I_, that was it.
Transmitter switch!
He laughed aloud. And left the switch open.
He found himself staring with fascination at the microphone. It was
pretty interesting, he had to admit that. It was mounted on the back
of the control chair, on swivel arms. It could easily be pulled into
position right in front of his face. Just as if it had been meant to.
He fiddled with it interestedly, swinging it back and forth, seeing how
it moved on the swivel arms.
He was interested in the way it moved so smoothly, that was all. By
coincidence, when he let go of it, it was directly in front of him.
There was something picking at him, something was nagging at the back
of his mind. He whistled under his breath and knuckled his eyes. He
scrubbed at the top of his head with his right hand, as if he could rub
the annoying thought. Suddenly he heard his own voice saying:
"Earth Control, this is _Phoenix I_. Come in please."
He looked up, startled. Now why would he say a thing like that?
And then, in the midst of his surprise, he repeated it!
"Earth Control, this is _Phoenix I_. Come in please."
He flipped the Receive switch without volition. His hands had suddenly
developed a life of their own. He began to breathe more rapidly, and
his forehead felt cool. He swallowed twice, quickly.
There was no answer on the receiver.
_No what? Answer? What is "answer"?_
"Estimate arrival four hundred seventy-two minutes," he said loudly,
looking at the time-to-destination indicator.
There was a sudden flood of relief, washing away the irritation that
had been picking away at the back of his mind. He felt at ease again.
He turned off both transmitter and receiver and stood out of the
control chair. He felt better now, but he was a little worried about
what had happened.
He couldn't understand it. Suddenly he had lost control of himself,
of his voice and his hands. He was doing meaningless things, saying
things, making motions stupidly. Every movement he made, every act, was
without pattern or sense.
He had a sudden thought, and it made his whole body grow cold and
prickly, and he almost choked.
_Maybe I'm going Nova._