The loneliness was in his belly, aching like a tumor.
"... read me?" Control's voice in his earphones.
"Loud and clear," he said absently.
"... minus two minutes ... mark!" A different voice. So many different
voices. They knew him, they talked to him. But he was alone with his
bitch.
_I had a true wife but--_
"... minus one minute ... mark!"
_This is my day I had a true wife--_
"... three ... two ... one ... mark!"
There was the sound of a world dying in his mind, the sound of thunder,
the sound of a sun splitting, the sound of a goddess giving birth, with
pain with agony in loneliness.
A giant's fist came from out of nothingness and smashed into his body.
His chest was compressed, his face was flattened, he could not get
enough air to breathe. The heavy sledge of acceleration crushed him back
into the padded chair, inexorable, implacable, relentless, heavy. His
vision clouded in red and he thought he would die. Instead, he spoke
into the lip mike, resenting it bitterly.
"Acceleration ... nine gee." He looked at the gauge that shimmered redly
before him, disbelieving. "Altitude 20,000."
He blacked out, sinking helplessly into the black plush night of
unawareness. _I had a true I had I had--_
Awakening to pain, he glanced at the gauges. He had been gone only a
split second.
"Altitude 28,000, acceleration pressure dropping."
His face began to resume its normal shape as the acceleration dropped.
"... six gee," he said, and breathing was easier. The giant reluctantly
began to withdraw his massive fist from Johnny's face.
He tipped a lever, watched the artificial horizon tilt slightly. "Air
control surfaces respond," he said. But soon there would be no air for
the surfaces to move against, and then he would control by flicking the
power that rumbled behind him.
"Altitude 40,000 ...
"... 85,000 ...
"... 100,000...." The sky was glistening black, he was passing from the
earth's envelope of air into the nothingness that was space. Now.
Now.
Now it was time to change angle, flatten the ship out, bring it into
position to run around the earth. _Once around lightly._
There was a high-pitched scream in his earphones. He remembered it had
been there for long, and wondered if he had told Control.
He flicked the switch that ignited the powerful steering rockets, and
the whine grew louder, unbearably loud. It sang to him, his bitch sang,
_I had a true wife, but I left her ... oh, oh, oh._
He began to feel a light tingle over his body, tiny needles delicately
jabbing every inch. His face became wooden, felt prickly. He tried to
lick his lips and could feel no sensation there. His vision fogged
again, and he knew it was not from acceleration this time, it was
something else.
Something else.
_What's it like out there?_
His belly told him. Fear.
He reached out his hand to touch the control panel, and his arm did not
respond. It was shaking, uncontrollably, and moved off to the right of
where he wanted it to go. When he tried to correct, it swung too far to
the left, waving as if it were alive. It hung there before him as in a
dream, oscillating back and forth.
He could not control his body, and the realization nurtured the tiny
seed of panic that lay heavily in his belly.
_Dump it...._
What did that mean? _Dump it ... go home now, baby ... _I had_ a
true ..._
Decision ... there was a decision he had to make, but he was too
frightened to know what it was.
He had been born in fear and lived in fear and his body was full of it,
quivering to the lover's touch of fear. Falling, darkness, the fear of
dying, the unknown, the unimaginable always lurking just out of the
corner of his eye.
He wanted to scream and the fear choked it off. His hands were at his
sides, limply useless, dangling at the seat. He had to hang on to
something. His hand found a projection at the side of the seat. He
clutched it desperately.
He knew he would fall, down, spiraling, weightless, off the cliff as in
a dream, off the ladder, the tree, he was a child and his toes were
tingling as he stood too near the edge of the cliff, knowing he might
fall.
He clutched tightly, putting every ounce of his strength into holding on
to the lever, the single solid reality in a world of shifting unreality.
He was going to fall he was falling I love you I hate you I had a true
wife ...
* * * * *
There was softness beneath his back, and he moved his hands, feeling the
crispness of sheets. There was a low murmur of voices. He raised his
hands to his eyes and the voices stopped. There were heavy bandages on
his eyes.
"Colonel?" came a questing voice, and Johnny realized it was Doctor
Lambert. "Awake?"
"I can't see. Why can't I see?"
"You'll be all right. It's all right."
"What happened?"
"How much do you remember?" asked the voice. "The blast-off?"
"Yes--yes, I remember that."
"The orbit? The landing?"
"No," he said. "Not that."
"You did it," said the voice. "You made it."
_This is my day. Once around lightly._
"Johnny," said the voice. "I don't know just how to say this. We know
what was wrong with Ship I, and why it killed Mitch. We know--hell, we
don't even begin to realize what we have at our fingertips now. It's so
big it's impossible to evaluate."
"What? I don't--"
"Sound, Johnny, sound. Or rather, vibration. It's something we're just
beginning to learn about. We know a few things; we know you can boil
water with sound if the frequency is high enough. And you can drill
metal with it--and it does things to the human body.
"There are frequencies of sound which can act directly on human nerves,
directly on the human brain. It means that if we know the right
frequency, we'll be able to produce any state we want in a man, any
emotion. Fear, anguish, anything.
"When the steering rockets were cut in, the Ship began to vibrate. It
generated frequencies so high that ordinary human senses couldn't detect
them. And when your nerves were exposed to those vibrations, it produced
fear. Pure and absolute fear. Motor control went, rational processes
went, all the nervous functions of the body went out of control. Your
body became a giant tuning fork, and the frequency to which it vibrated
was fear.
"I can't remember--"
"Sanity went, too, Johnny," said the man softly. "You could not stand
that fear and remain sane, so something cut off. That was what happened
to Mitch."
"How did I get back?"
"We don't know. The films show your face suddenly going blank. Then you
flew. That's all. We hoped you could tell us."
"No. No--I don't remember--"
"There was something in you so strong it overrode everything else, even
the fear. We'd like to know what it is. We'll find out, Johnny, and it
will mean a lot to the human race when we do."
_This is my day._
"Is my wife here?"