"This is your last round trip, isn't it? Your two years are up."
"It was up last trip. I re-contracted."
Mendel grinned. "Member of the club now, huh? I thought you'd do that.
Welcome aboard."
Blair shrugged self-consciously. "You know how it is," he said. "Every
time I go back, Earth gets a little heavier. Besides, I like the soft
life."
"You want it _really_ soft," Mendel told him, "you put in for station
duty. All we do is float around and around, draw our pay, and look at
the pretty scenery."
"If that boy Ricks blows up," Blair said, "we'll _both_ have plenty to
do. I'm going to rack out, I'll see you later."
"See you, nursemaid."
Blair took the elevator down to the outer ring, and went to his cubicle
in Section Two, next to the one occupied by Ricks, across the corridor
from Standish and Miller. He stretched out on his bed and half-dozed,
as his body gradually got reoriented to quarter-gravity.
Twenty minutes later, the meteor hit.
* * * * *
It should never have happened. The Station had full radar vision, and
so the meteor should have been seen long before it struck. The Station
was powered, and should have been able to goose itself out of the
meteor's path. So it should never have happened. But it did.
It was one of those million-to-one shots. The meteor, a chunk of
space-rock about six feet in diameter, had come boiling across the
Solar System, past the sun and the two innermost planets, headed on
a near-collision course with Earth. It had actually dipped into the
Earth's atmosphere, which slowed it somewhat, but not enough for it
to be captured by Earth's gravity. It had shot out of the atmosphere
again, moving more slowly than before, now redhot from atmospheric
friction, and shortly thereafter it plowed into the Space Station from
behind.
From the moment it had first become a potential danger to the Station,
it had been unseeable. It was directly between the Station and the
massive ball of Earth. It was the one thin segment of space where the
radar's vision was unclear, and it was out of that segment that the
juggernaut had come.
The impact could have been worse. In the first place, the meteor
was not now traveling at its normal top speed. In the second place,
the meteor and the Station were traveling in approximately the same
direction, so that the Station, in effect, rolled with the punch. The
space-rock broke through the outer hull. Whether or not it penetrated
the inner hull no one was immediately sure.
The strike was in Section Five, containing the cargo, with it the seven
aluminum crates for QB. At the instant of impact, even before the
meteor had ground to a halt, an alarm bell rang in Section Five. The
bell meant that the bulkhead doors to that section would be closed in
ten seconds.
There was only one person in Section Five at the time, a crewman named
Gilmore, who'd been checking the security of the lashings on the cargo.
Constant strike drills had made his reaction immediate and instinctive:
he ran for the nearest door. He made it, too, all but his left shoe.
The bulkhead door neatly snicked off the heel of the shoe as it slammed
across the doorway and sealed shut. Gilmore's shoe was ruined and his
sock slightly grazed, but his foot was untouched.
Throughout the rest of the Station, another bell was ringing, this one
with a deeper tone and a two-beat rhythm. Harvey Ricks heard it and
leaped up from his bunk, forgetting the discomfort that hadn't yet
abated, despite the cheery words of the Cargomaster and the Station
Manager. The bell rang on, and Ricks stood quivering in his cubicle,
body tensed for fight or flight, mind bewildered and frightened.
The cubicle door jolted open and Blair's face stuck in long enough for
him to shout, "Suit up! It's under your bunk!" Then he was gone again,
and Ricks heard him delivering the same call to Standish and Miller,
across the corridor.
Ricks, incredibly grateful for any excuse to be in motion, lunged
across the cubicle toward his bunk. He misjudged the force of his
leap, with the lesser gravity, and tumbled head over heels across the
bunk and into the metal wall. He lay crouched on the bunk, gripping his
knees, and whispered desperately to himself, "Take it easy, take it
easy, take it easy."
When he could move without trembling, he got to his feet and dragged
the spacesuit out from under the bunk. In the company course,
preparatory to leaving on this trip, he'd learned how to don a
spacesuit, and he clambered rapidly into this one, closing the inner
and outer zippers, and then searched under the bunk again and dragged
out the helmet. As he got to his feet, the bell stopped.
* * * * *
Ricks bit down hard on his lower lip, willing himself to be calm.
Carefully, he donned the helmet and went through the series of safety
checks he'd been taught. Faceplate open, he put his fingers to the
row of buttons at the suit's waist. First finger, left hand; helmet
lamp: It worked, he could see it shining against the opposite wall.
Click off. First finger, right hand; air intake: It worked, he could
hear the faint hissing below his right ear. Cautiously, he closed the
faceplate and inhaled. The oxygen mixture was rich, but good. Click
off, faceplate open. Second finger, left hand; heat unit: It worked,
he could immediately feel the suit warming against his legs and arms.
Click off. Second finger, right hand; water intake: It worked, a thin
dribble of lukewarm water emerged from the tube in the corner of his
mouth. Click off.
So far, so good. He hunched his left shoulder forward, and read the
small dials there: Oxygen tanks, full. Water tank, half full. Battery,
fully charged. Temperature inside the suit, sixty-eight degrees.
Was the air in the cubicle getting foul? Ricks snapped the faceplate
shut, pushed the air intake button. This air was cleaner, he was sure
of it.
Where were the others? Where was Blair? He couldn't hear a sound. The
suit cut out all external atmosphere, but not all external sound. He
reached up under the helmet chin and switched on the suit radio. A
faint crackling of static told him it was on, but other than that there
was no sound.
He looked around the cubicle. Was there any air in it now? He could be
standing in total vacuum, there was no way to be sure. He could be the
only one still alive in the Station.
"Blair?" His own voice, confined within the helmet, sounded harsh and
croaking in his ears. The radio gave no answer.
Unwillingly, he moved toward the door. In here, the sound of his
pounding heart was magnified, frightening him more than the radio's
silence or the thought that the Station might now be airless. He pushed
open the door, and saw Blair standing in the corridor, wearing his
spacesuit but holding the helmet casually in his left hand.
Blair looked at him and grimaced, then motioned for Ricks to open his
faceplate. Ricks reached up, switched off the radio, and removed his
helmet. He managed a grin. "Kind of nice in here," he said. "Set up a
bar, put a couple of chairs around, it could be real liveable." But he
heard the tremor in his voice, and he knew that Blair heard it, too.
Blair said, "Get on down by the elevator with Standish and Miller.
If you hear another bell, a few notes lower than the first one, with
a triple-beep in it, clap the helmet on. Otherwise, keep it off. You
don't have canned air to waste."
"Watch for the triple-beep," said Ricks jauntily. "Aye aye, sir."
Blair grunted, and turned away, heading down the corridor in the
opposite direction. Ricks watched him go, glaring at his back. 'I'm a
better man than you, Harvey Ricks,' said that back. 'You'll break down,
you'll flunk my course, you'll never match me or even come close.'
Blair disappeared, through the bulkhead doorway to Section Three, and
Ricks turned the other way, walking down the corridor and right to
the elevator. Standish and Miller were standing there, helmets on but
faceplates open, and Ricks felt somewhat better. _His_ helmet was in
his hand.
* * * * *
As he came up to them, Standish said, "What do you suppose it is?" His
pale face was even paler now, his large eyes larger.
Ricks shrugged. "It's probably just a drill. Get us new boys all
lathered up, just in case we weren't taking it all seriously."
"I thought I felt a tremor just before the bell started," said Miller.
"We may have been hit by a meteor or some such thing."
Ricks shrugged again. "Whatever it was, it doesn't seem very urgent.
Did Papa Blair tell you two about the triple-beep?"
"Sure," said Miller. "He was sore at you, because you were late getting
out in the hall."
"I was running my suit-check," said Ricks easily.
"Omigosh!" cried Standish. "I forgot!" He started the check, right then
and there.
Watching Standish run through his suit-check, Ricks felt a _lot_
better. _He_ hadn't forgotten.
* * * * *
Blair found Mendel at the sealed bulkhead between Sections Four and
Five. Mendel waved to him and grinned sourly. "I thought you'd be
along," he said.
"What is it? The cargo section?"
"Right through there, boy. Sorry. We've had a meteor strike. Son of a
gun came at us on the blind side."
Blair glanced quickly at the gauges beside the bulkhead door.
"Pressure's up," he said. "Looks like it didn't break all the way
through."
"No way to tell yet," said Mendel. "It might be a slow leakage."
"Then we have time to move the cargo."
Mendel shook his head. "Sorry, Glenn, no can do. Open this door here,
it might joggle the air pressure just enough to make a slow leak a fast
one. If that happens, it won't be this door that slams shut, it'll be
the one way over there, between Three and Four."
"So you wait in Three. I'm willing to take the chance."
"I'm not. And it isn't your pearly white skin I'm worried about, it's
my pearly white Station. If we have one Section in vacuum, we'll have
trouble enough keeping equilibrium. With two Sections out of whack,
we'll wobble all over the damn Solar System."
"Irv, my whole cargo's in there! The cargo for QB is in there!"
"I can't help it. Besides, vacuum won't hurt that stuff for QB."
"Irv, if there's a break through the inner hull, and that meteor shakes
loose, the QB cargo won't be _in_ the Station any more, it'll be
scattered halfway from here to Mars. Did you ever see stuff come flying
out of a room that goes suddenly to vacuum?"
"Yes, I did. Did you ever see a _man_ that's gone suddenly to vacuum?"
"Irv, look at your blasted pressure gauge!"
"It's down."
"It's down less than half a point, Irv, and that's because you've
stopped pumping air in there. Listen, that QB cargo isn't hermetically
sealed. If it doesn't get good air, it can rot."
"It can rot right now, for all of me. I'm not touching Section Five or
anything in it. We'll get in touch with QB, and let them send a couple
of reeps up here. It's their job, not ours."
"Irv, don't you realize what that cargo means to the boys at QB?"
"Sure, I do. But do _you_ realize what this Station here means to _me_?
The boys at QB can re-order another batch. I can't go out and re-order
another Station."
"Irv, listen. The ground-pounders don't realize how important that
stuff is. Without it, the crew at QB will be at each other's throats in
a month. This is no exaggeration, Irv, the whole QB operation will fall
apart within a month. And if QB falls apart, the whole system falls
apart, because it's QB's job to run maintenance for the rest of us."
"I know that," said Mendel, "I know it well. Every word you say is
absolutely true. But I still say they can re-order."
"And _I_ say it'll take three months at the very least to fill the
new order! We can't even put the order in until we can prove to the
ground-pounders' satisfaction that this batch is destroyed, and we
won't be able to do that till the reeps get here and patch the hole.
So that's ten or fifteen days right there. Then they'll fool around
another half a month or more, figuring out costs and tax breaks and
whatnot, wanting to know why QB can't make do till the next regular
shipment, and bogging down in a lot of red tape. Then they have to put
the order in, out of sequence, so it'll take longer to fill it. And
every single item has to be double-checked and approved by the psycho
department and half a dozen other departments. It'll be _more_ than
three months!"
Mendel doggedly shook his head. "I'm not going to argue with you,
Glenn," he said, "I'm going to tell you. That cargo is your
responsibility, but this whole Station is mine, and I'm not going to
risk this Station for you or QB or anybody. Period, finish, end of
discussion. Now, I'm going to go on up and call QB and have them send
us a couple of reeps. Want to come along?"
"I want to boot you in the rump, Irv, I swear."
Mendel grinned. "I feel like doing some rump-booting myself. Take it
easy, Glenn. It'll all work out."
"Hot diggity," said Blair sourly.
"Want to come up to the office with me?"
"No."
"Suit yourself."
Mendel left, and Blair stomped angrily back down the corridor to
Section Two, where he found the three engineers still waiting by the
elevator. He glared at them and snarled, "What the devil are you clowns
doing? Get out of those idiot clown suits, the party's over."
The three of them stared at him in astonishment. Ricks looked as though
he might smart-talk, and Blair waited hopefully, fists clenched, but
something about his stance gave Ricks second thoughts and he turned
away without a word, red-faced and frowning.
* * * * *
QB was the Quartermaster Base, a large satellite in permanent orbit
two hundred miles above the surface of the Moon. It was shaped somewhat
like the three Space Stations, though with a thicker outer ring and a
less intricate inner section. This base held all of the equipment for
maintenance and repair of the entire General Transit system, the three
Space Stations, the two barbells, and the Moon-based lighters.
Attached to QB by a simple hook-and-ring mechanism were six repair
ships, familiarly known as Reeps. Reeps were small blunt rounded
one-man ships, with payloads made up exclusively of fuel. Protruding
from the front of each reep were four jointed arms, operated by the
arms and legs of the pilot. The reep had one large rocket exhaust at
the rear, which swiveled to allow turning maneuverability, and four
small swivelled exhausts around the body, permitting the reep complete
close-range maneuverability. An experienced reep pilot could operate
his ship as though it were an extension of his body, backing and
sidestepping, working the four arms as readily as he used his own arms
and legs.
There were two kinds of reeps, and three of each kind. There was the
gripper reep, with arms designed for holding and manipulating, and the
fixer reep, with arms for welding and cutting.
When the call came in from Station One, QB was three-quarters around
the Earth-side of its orbit. The radioman on duty got the approximate
dimensions of the meteor now jammed into the outer edge of the Station,
and its approximate placement, and passed this information on to the
Dispatcher Office. A call then went down to the Supply Department for
Part X-102-W, outer hull replacement panel. This piece, eight feet by
eight, was delivered to the Dispatch Delivery Point, at the inner rim
of the doughnut.
Meanwhile, fixer reep 2 and gripper reep 5 were fueled and piloted.
Spacesuited QB crewmen put the replacement panel in position for the
gripper reep to get hold of, and the two ships broke away from the
satellite, headed toward Earth.
The radioman at QB got in touch with the radioman at Station One and
told him to expect the two reeps in fourteen days, approximately twelve
hours before the Station was scheduled to make contact with the barbell
from Station Three.
For everyone concerned, it was a long fourteen days. Irv Mendel watched
the air pressure creep downward in Section Five, and gnawed his lower
lip. Glenn Blair thought of the cargo for QB, and snarled at everyone
he saw. Harvey Ricks thought of his two moments of panic, and waited
for the chance to shove Blair's superior attitude down his stinking
throat.
* * * * *
Time in space is arbitrary. There are no seasons in the gulf between
the planets, and there is no day and night. The sun, incredibly bright
and fierce when seen without the protection of miles of atmosphere,
glares out eternally at its domain, heating whatever it touches,
leaving to frigid cold whatever lies in shadow. The twenty-four hour
day is a fact of Earth, not a fact of the universe. In the void between
the planets, the day is singular, and will end only with the death of
the sun.
No matter how much he wills it otherwise, Man is a parochial creature,
a native of a planet and not of all space. Whatever else he leaves
behind him when he roves beyond his own globe, he takes with him his
ingrained ideas of night and day. In every room and office of Space
Station One there was a clock, and every clock pointed simultaneously
to exactly the same time. The time was that of the Greenwich Meridian,
the time of England and Ireland and Scotland and Wales. When Big Ben
tolled twelve o'clock noon, the spacefarers of Station One ate lunch.
When Big Ben, thousands of miles away in London, struck twelve o'clock
midnight, the spacemen obediently went to bed.
The reeps arrived at four twenty-two p.m., the fourteenth day out from
Earth. The gripper reep, still clutching replacement part X-102-W, slid
into a soft elliptical orbit around the Station. The fixer reep closed
gently against the personnel hatch grid. Spacesuited crewmen fastened
it to the grid by metal lines through the two rings, one at the reep's
top toward the rear and the other at the bottom near the front. The
reep pilot pumped the cabin air into the storage tank, adjusted his
helmet, and opened the magnetically-sealed clear plastic cockpit dome.
A Station crewman helped him out onto the grid, and escorted him inside
for a conference with Irv Mendel and Blair.
Mendel greeted him at his office doorway, hand out-thrust. "Welcome
aboard. Irv Mendel."
The pilot grinned and took the proferred hand. "Ed Wiley," he said. He
nodded to Blair. "How's it going, Glenn?"
"Lousy," Blair told him. "Did you see the strike?"
"Yeah, it's a nice one, a real boulder. Which section is that?"
"Five," said Mendel. "Glenn's cargo is in there, that's why he's so
peeved."
"It's QB's cargo," snapped Blair, "not mine."