“Almost on the other side of the protosun. We can get there faster in hyperspace.”
The planet was still invisibly small where Elephant brought us out. The protosun looked about the same.
A protosun is the foetus of a star: a thin mass of gas and dust, brought together by slow eddies in interstellar magnetic fields or by the presence of a trojan point in some loose cluster of stars, which is collapsing and contracting due to gravity. I’d found material on protosuns in the ship’s library, but it was all astronomical data; nobody had ever been near one for a close look. In theory the Fast Protosun must be fairly well along in its evolution, since it was glowing at the center.
“There it is,” said Elephant “Two days away at one gee.”
“Good. We can do our instrument checks on the way. Strap down.”
With the fusion motor pushing us smoothly along, Elephant went back to the scope, and I started checking the other instruments. One thing stood out like a beacon.
“Elephant. Have you noticed in me a tendency to use profanity for emphasis?”
“Not really. Why?”
“It’s goddam radioactive out there.”
“Could you be a little more specific, sir?”
“Our suit shields would break down in three days. The extension bubble would go in twenty hours.”
“Okay, add it to your list. Any idea what’s causing it?”
“Not one.” I made a note on my list, then went back to work. We were in no danger; the GP hull would protect us from anything but impact with something big.
“No asteroid belts,” said Elephant. “Meteor density zero, as far as I can tell. No other planets.”
“The interstellar gas may clean away anything small at these speeds.”
“One thing’s for sure, Bey. I’ve got my money’s worth. This is a damn funny system.”
“Yah. Well, we missed lunch. Shall we get dinner?”
“Philistine.”
Elephant ate fast. He was back at the telescope before I was ready for coffee. Watching him move, I was again reminded of a juggernaut; but he’d never shown as much determination when I knew him on Earth. If a hungry Kzin had been standing between him and the telescope, he’d have left footprints in fur.
But the only thing that could get in his way out here was me.
“Can’t get a close look at the planet,” said Elephant, “but it looks polished.”
“Like a billiard ball?”
“Just that. I don’t see any sign of an atmosphere.”
“How about blast craters?”
“Nothing.”
“They should be there.”
“This system’s pretty clean of meteors.”
“But the space around us shouldn’t be. And at these speeds—”
“Uh huh. That better go on your list.”
I wrote it down.
We slept on the disaster couches. In front of me were the yellow lights of the control panel; the stars glowed red through one side window, blue through the other. I stayed awake for a long time, staring through the forward window into the red darkness of the protosun. The window was opaque, but I saw the dark red blur clearly in my imagination.
The radiation held steady all through the next day. I did some more thorough checking, using temperature readings and deep-radar on both sun and planet. Everywhere I looked was a new anomaly.
“This star definitely shouldn’t be glowing yet. It’s too spread out; the gas should be too thin for fusion.”
“Is it hot enough to glow?”
“Sure. But it shouldn’t be.”
“Maybe the theories on protosuns are wrong.”
“Then they’re way wrong.”
“Put it on your list.”
And, an hour later:
“Elephant.”
“Another peculiarity?”
“Yah.”
From under shaggy brows, Elephant’s eyes plainly told me he was getting sick of peculiarities.
“According to the deep-radar shadow, this planet doesn’t have any lithosphere. It’s worn right down to what ought to be the magma but isn’t because it’s so cold out here.”
“Write it down. How many entries have you got?”
“Nine.”
“Is any one of them worth paying two hundred kilostars to know about beforehand?”
“The radiation, maybe, if we didn’t have a GP hull.”
“But,” said Elephant, glaring out at the huge, dark disk, “they knew we had a GP hull. Bey, can anything get through a General Products hull?”
“Light, like a laser beam. Gravity, like tides crushing you into the nose of a ship when you get too close to a neutron star. Impact won’t harm the hull, but it’ll kill what’s inside.”
“Maybe the planet’s inhabited. The more I think about it, the more sure I am it came from outside. Nothing in the galaxy could have given it this velocity. It’s diving through the plane of the galaxy; it wouldn’t have to push in from the rim.”
“Okay. What do we do if someone shoots a laser at us?”
“We perish, I think. I had reflective paint spread around the cabin, except for the windows, but the rest of the hull is transparent.”
“We can still get into hyperspace from here. And for the next twenty hours. Afterward we’ll be too close to the planet.”
I went right to sleep that night, being pretty tired despite the lack of exercise. Hours later I slowly realized that I was being examined. I could see it through my closed eyelids; I could feel the heat of the vast red glare, the size of the angry eye, the awful power of the mind behind it. I tried to struggle away, smacked my hand on something, and woke with a shock.
I lay there in the red darkness. The edge of the protosun peeked through a window. I could feel its hostile glare.
I said, “Elephant.”
“Mngl?”
“Nothing.” Morning would be soon enough.
Morning.
“Elephant, would you do me a favor?”
“Sure. You want Dianna? My right arm? Shave off my beard?”
“I’ll keep Sharrol, thanks. Put on your suit, will you?”
“Sure, that makes sense. We aren’t nearly uncomfortable enough, just because we closed off the bubble.”
“Right. And because I’m a dedicated masochist, I’m going to put my suit on this instant. Now, I hate to enjoy myself alone…”
“You got the wind up?”
“A little. Just enough.”
“Anything for a friend. You go first.”
There was just room to get our suits on one at a time. If the inner airlock door hadn’t been open, there wouldn’t have been that. We tried leaving our helmets thrown back, but they got in our way against the crash couches. So we taped them to the window in front of us.
I felt better that way, but Elephant clearly thought I’d flipped. “You sure you wouldn’t rather eat with your helmet on?”
“I hate suit food syrup. We can reach our helmets if we get a puncture.”
“What puncture? We’re in a General Products hull!”
“I keep remembering that the Outsiders knew that.”
“We’ve been through that.”
“Let’s go through it again. Assume they thought we might be killed anyway if we weren’t prepared. Then what?”
“Gronk.”
“Either they expected us to go out in suits and get killed, or they know of something that can reach through a General Products hull.”
“Or both. In which case the suits do us no good at all. Bey, do you know how long it’s been since a General Products hull failed?”
“I’ve never heard of it happening at all.”
“It never has. The puppeteers offer an enormous guarantee in case one does. Something in the tens of millions if someone dies as a result.”
“You’re dead right. I’ve been stupid. Go ahead and take off your suit.”
Elephant turned to look at me. “And you?”
“I’l
l keep mine on. Do you believe in hunches?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Except just this once.”
Elephant shrugged his shaggy eyebrows and went back to his telescope. By then we were six hours out from the nameless planet and decelerating.
“I think I’ve found an asteroid crater,” he said presently.
“Let’s see.” I had a look. “Yah, I think you’re right. But it’s damn near disappeared.”
He took the telescope back. “It’s round enough. Almost has to be a crater. Bey, why should it be so eroded?”
“It must be the interstellar dust. If it is, then that’s why there’s no atmosphere or lithosphere. But I can’t see the dust being that thick, even at these speeds.”
“Put it—”
“Yah.” I reached for my list.
“If we find one more anomaly, I’ll scream.”
Half an hour later we found life.
By then we were close enough to use the gravity drag to slow us. The beautiful thing about a gravity drag is that it uses very little power. It converts a ship’s momentum relative to the nearest powerful mass into heat, and all you have to do is get rid of the heat. Since the ST∞’s hull would pass only various ranges of radiation corresponding to what the puppeteers’ varied customers considered visible light, the shipbuilders had run a great big radiator fin out from the gravity drag. It glowed dull red behind us. And the fusion drive was off. There was no white fusion flame to hurt visibility.
Elephant had the scope at highest magnification. At first, as I peered into the eyepiece, I couldn’t see what he was talking about. There was a dull white plain, all the same color except for a few blobs of blue. The blobs wouldn’t have stood out except for the uniformity of the surface around them.
Then one of them moved. Very slowly, but it was moving.
“Right,” I said. “Let me run a temperature check.”
The surface temperature in that region was about right for helium II. And on the rest of the planet as well; the protosun wasn’t putting out much energy, though it was very gung ho on radiation.
“I don’t think they match any species I know.”
“I can’t tell,” said Elephant. He had the telescope and the library screen going at the same time, with a Sirius VIII blob on the library screen. “There are twenty different species of helium life in this book, and they all look exactly alike.”
“Not quite. They must have a vacuum-proof integument. And you’ll notice those granules in the—”
“I treasure my ignorance on this subject, Bey. Anyway, we aren’t going to find any species we know on this world. Even a stage-tree seed would explode the moment it hit.”
I let the subject die.
Once again Elephant ran the scope over “his” planet, this time looking for the blobby life-forms. They were fairly big for helium II life, but not abnormally so. Lots of cold worlds develop life using the peculiar properties of helium II, but because it hasn’t much use for complexity, it usually stays in the amoeba stage.
There was one peculiarity, which I duly noted. Every animal was on the back side of the planet with relation to the planet’s course through the galaxy. They weren’t afraid of protosun sunlight, but they seemed to fear interstellar dust.
“You promised to scream.”
“It’s not odd enough. I’ll wait.”
Two hours passed.
The red glow of the radiator fin became more pronounced. So did the dull uniformity of the planetary surface. The planet was a disk now beyond the front window; if you watched it for a while you could see it grow. Turning ship to face the planet had made no difference to the gravity drag.
“Cue Ball,” said Elephant.
“No good. It’s been used. Beta Lyrae I.”
“Cannonball Express, then.”
“Elephant, what are you doing here?”
He turned, startled. “What do you mean?”
“Look, you know by now I’m with you all the way. But I do wonder. You spent a million stars getting here, and you’d have spent two if you had to. You could be home in the Rockies with Dianna or hovering near Beta Lyrae, which is unusual enough and better scenery than this snowball. You could be sampling oddball drugs in Crashlanding or looking for Mist Demons on Plateau. Why here?”
“Because it is there.”
“What the blazes is that supposed to mean?”
“Bey, once upon a time there was a guy named Miller. Six years ago he took a ramscoop-fusion drive ship and put a hyperdrive in it and set out for the edge of the universe, figuring he could get his hydrogen from space and use the fusion plant to power his hyperdrive. He’s probably still going. He’ll be going forever unless he hits something. Why?”
“A psychiatrist I’m not.”
“He wants to be remembered. When you’re dead a hundred years, what will you be remembered for?”
“I’ll be the idiot who rode with Gregory Pelton, who spent two months and more than a million stars to set his ship down on a totally worthless planet.”
“Gronk. All right, what about abstract knowledge? This star will be out of known space in ten years. Our only chance to explore it is right now. What—”
There was an almost silent breeze of air, and a strangling pressure in my larynx, and a stabbing pain in my ears, simultaneously. I heard the bare beginning of an alarm, but I was already reaching for my helmet. I clamped it down hard, spun the collar, and gave vent to an enormous belch at the same time that the wind went shrieking from my lungs.
There was no way to realize what was happening—and no time. But vacuum was around us, and air was spraying into my suit, frigid air. Iron spikes were being driven through my ears, but I was going to live. My lungs held a ghastly emptiness, but I would live. I turned to Elephant.
The fear of death was naked in his face. He had his helmet down, but he was having trouble with the collar. I had to force his hands away to get it fastened right. His helmet misted over, then cleared; he was getting air. Had it come in time to save his life?
I was alive. The pain was leaving my ears, and I was breathing: inhale, pause, inhale, as the pressure rose to normal.
I’d seen what had happened. Now I had time to think it through, to remember it, to play it back.
What had happened was insane.
The hull had turned to dust. Just that. All at once and nothing first, the ship’s outside had disintegrated and blown away on a whispering breath of breathing-air. I’d seen it.
And sure enough, the hull was gone. Only the innards of the ship remained. Before me, the lighted control board. A little below that, the manhole to the packed bubble, and the bubble package itself. Above the board, the half-disk of the mystery planet, and stars. To the left, stars. To the right, Elephant, looking dazed and scared, and beyond him, stars. Behind me, the airlock, the kitchen storage-block and dial board, a glimpse of the landing legs and glowing radiator fin, and stars. The ST∞ was a skeleton.
Elephant shook his head, then turned on his suit radio. I heard the magnified click in my helmet.
We looked at each other, waiting. But there was nothing to say. Except, Elephant, look! We don’t have a hull no more! Isn’t that remarkable?
I sighed, turned to the control board, and began nursing the fusion drive to life. From what I could see of the ship, nothing seemed to be floating away. Whatever had been fixed to the hull must also have been fixed to other things.
“What are you doing, Bey?”
“Getting us out of here. Uh, you can scream now.”
“Why? I mean, why leave?”
He’d flipped. Flatlanders are basically unstable. I got the drive pushing us at low power, turned off the gravity drag, and turned to face him. “Look, Elephant. No hull.” I swept an arm around me. “None.”
“But what’s left of the ship is still mine?”
“Uh, yah. Sure.”
“I want to land. Can you talk me out of it?”
He was serious. Co
mpletely so. “The landing legs are intact,” he went on. “Our suits can keep out the radiation for three days. We could land and take off in twelve hours.”
“We probably could.”
“And we spent going on two months getting here.”
“Right.”
“I’d feel like an idiot getting this close and then turning for home. Wouldn’t you?”
“I would, except for one thing. And that one thing says you’re landing this ship over my unconscious body.”
“All right, the hull turned to dust and blew away. What does that mean? It means we’ve got a faulty hull, and I’m going to sue the hind legs off General Products when we get back. But do you know what caused it?”
“No.”
“So why do you assume it’s some kind of threat?”
“Tell you what I’ll do,” I said. I turned the ship until it was tail down to Cannonball Express. “Now. We’ll be there in three hours if you insist on landing. It’s your ship, just as you say. But I’m going to try to talk you out of it.”
“That’s fair.”
“Have you had space-pilot training?”
“Naturally.”
“Did it include a history of errors course?”
“I don’t think so. We got a little history of the state of the art.”
“That’s something. You remember that they started out with chemical fuels and that the first ship to the asteroids was built in orbit around Earth’s moon?”
“Uh huh.”
“This you may not have heard. There were three men in that ship, and when they were launched, it was in an orbit that took them just slightly inside the moon’s orbit, then out again and away. About thirty hours after launching the men noticed that all their ports were turning opaque. A concentration of dust in their path was putting little meteor pits all through the quartz. Two of the men wanted to continue on, using instruments to finish their mission. But the third man was in command. They used their rockets and stopped themselves dead.
“Remember, materials weren’t as durable in those days, and nothing they were using had been well tested. The men stopped their ship in the orbit of the moon, which by then was 230,000 miles behind them, and called base to say they’d aborted the mission.”
“You remember this pretty well. How come?”
“They drilled these stories into us again and again. Everything they tried to teach us was illustrated with something from history. It stuck.”