“Well, what do you want me to do, Tanya? Look at my side of it. The same thing has happened to you, I’ll bet.”
“It happened once,” Tanya agreed. “Only I told him right away.”
“There, you see!” Sergei said happily. “And how did he take it?”
Tanya shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he survived.”
She got up, brushed off her skirt, and asked, “They’re really not going to let you pull Gs?”
“Really,” Sergei said, getting up. “Look, it’s all right for you—you’re a girl—but how am I going to tell her something like that?”
“You’d better tell her.”
She turned and walked toward the four-dimensional chess fans, where Misha Malyshev was shouting something about mindless cretins. Sergei called after her, “Tanya…” She stopped and turned around. “I don’t know—maybe this will all blow over. Right now I haven’t got my head together.”
He knew it wouldn’t blow over. And he knew that Tanya realized this. But Tanya smiled and nodded.
After everything that had happened, Sergei wasn’t a bit hungry. He reluctantly dipped his cookies into strong, sweet tea, and listened as Panin, Malyshev, and Gurgenidze discussed the menu. Then they set to eating, and for a few minutes silence reigned at the table. They could hear someone at the next table assert, “These days you can’t write like Hemingway. You’ve got to write concisely, provide maximum information. Hemingway lacks precision.”
“And a good thing, too! Precision belongs in technical encyclopedias.”
“In encyclopedias? Take Strogov’s Road of Roads. Have you read it?”
“‘Precision, precision!’” said someone’s bass. “You yourself don’t even know what—”
Panin put down his fork, looked at Malyshev, and said, “Now tell us about the insides of a whale.”
Before school, Malyshev had worked in a whale-butchering complex.
“Hold it, hold it,” said Gurgenidze.
“I should tell you instead about how they catch cuttlefish off Miao-lieh Tao,” Malyshev proposed.
“Cut it out!” Sergei said irritably.
Everyone looked at him and fell silent. Then Panin said, “This can’t go on, Sergei. Get a grip on yourself.”
Gurgenidze got up and said, “Right! Time for a little snort.”
He went over to the buffet, came back with a decanter of tomato juice, and said excitedly, “Hey, guys, Phu Dat says that on the seventeenth Liakhov is leaving for Interstellar One.”
Sergei at once lifted up his head. “When exactly?”
“The seventeenth,” Gurgenidze repeated. “On the Lightning.”
The photon ship Khius-Lightning was the first manned ram-scoop in the world. It had been two years in construction, and for the last three years the best spacemen had been testing it within the System.
This is it, it’s begun, thought Sergei. He asked, “Do you know the range?”
“Phu Dat says one and a half light-months.”
“Comrade spacemen!” said Malyshev. “We must drink to the occasion.” He ceremoniously poured the tomato juice into their tumblers. “Let us raise our glasses,” he said.
“Don’t forget the salt,” said Panin.
All four clinked glasses and drank. It’s begun, it’s begun, thought Sergei.
“I’ve seen the Khius-Lightning,” said Malyshev. “Last year, when I was interning on the Astericus. It’s enormous.”
“The diameter of the mirror is seven hundred meters,” Gurgenidze said. “Not all that large. But on the other hand the span of the scoop is—get this—six kilometers. And the length from edge to edge is almost eight kilometers.”
Mass, one thousand sixteen metric tons, Sergei recalled mechanically. Average thrust, eighteen megasangers. Cruising speed, eighty megameters per second. Maximum rated acceleration, six G’s. Too little. Maximum rated intake, fifteen wahrs… Too little, too little.
“Navigators,” Malyshev said dreamily, “that’s our craft. We’ll ship out on ones like that.”
“Over the sun from Earth to Pluto!” Gurgenidze said.
Someone at the other end of the hall shouted in a ringing tenor, “Comrades! Did you hear? On the seventeenth the Lightning is leaving for Interstellar One!”
Noise broke out all over the hall. Three cadets from the Command Division got up from the next table and rapidly took to voice.
“The aces are right on course,” said Malyshev, following them with his eyes.
“I’m a simple man, a guileless man,” Panin said suddenly, pouring tomato juice into his glass. “And what I still can’t understand is who needs these stars, anyhow?”
“What do you mean, who needs them?” Gurgenidze asked in surprise.
“Well, the moon is a launching pad and observatory. Venus is for actinides. Mars is for purple cabbage, the atmosphere project, colonization. Wonderful. But what are the stars good for?”
“Do you mean to say you don’t know why Liakhov is going to Interstellar?” Malyshev asked.
“A freak!” said Gurgenidze. “A victim of mutation.”
“Listen,” Panin continued. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Here we are, interstellar spacers, and we go off to UV Ceti. Two and a half parsecs.”
“Two point four,” said Sergei, looking into his glass.
“We travel,” Panin continued. “We travel a long time. Let’s even say there are planets there. We land, we do research, see the seven sails, as my grandfather says.”
“My grandfather has better taste,” Gurgenidze put in.
“Then we start back. We’re old and stiff, and arguing all the time. Or at least Sergei isn’t talking to anyone. And we’re already pushing sixty. Meanwhile on Earth, thanks to Einstein, a hundred and fifty years have gone by. Some bunch of very young-looking citizens meets us, and at first everything is very nice: Music, flowers, and shish kebab. But then I want to go see my home town, Vologda. And it turns out nobody lives there any more. You see, it’s a museum.”
“The Boris Panin Memorial Museum-City,” said Malyshev. “Chock full of memorial plaques.”
“Right,” Panin continued. “Chock full. Anyhow, you can’t live in Vologda, but on the other hand—and will you like that ‘other hand’?—there’s a monument there. A monument to me. I look at myself and inquire why there are horns growing out of my head. I don’t understand the answer. It’s clear only that they aren’t horns. They explain to me that a hundred and fifty years ago I wore a helmet like that. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I never had any such helmet.’ ‘Oh, how interesting!’ says the curator of the museum-city, and he starts making notes. ‘We must inform the Central Bureau for Eternal Memory of this immediately,’ he says. And the words ‘Eternal Memory’ have unpleasant connotations for me. But how can I explain this to the curator?”
“You’re getting carried away,” said Malyshev. “Get back to the point.”
“Anyhow, I begin to understand that I’ve ended up in another alien world. We deliver a report on the results of our expedition, but it gets a curious reception. You see, the results have only a narrow historical interest. Everything has already been known for fifty years, because human beings have been to UV Ceti—that’s where we went, isn’t it?—twenty times by now. And anyhow, they’ve built three artificial planets the size of Earth there. They can make trips like that in two months. You see, they have discovered some new property of space-time which we don’t yet understand and which they call, say, trimpazation. Finally they show us the News of the Day film clip covering the installation of our ship in the Archaeological Museum. We look, we listen…”
“How you do get carried away!” said Malyshev.
“I’m a simple man,” Panin said threateningly. “Now and again my imagination runs free.”
“I don’t like the way you’re talking,” Sergei said quietly.
Panin immediately became serious. “All right,” he said, also quietly. “Then tell me where I’m wrong
. Tell me what we need the stars for.”
“Wait,” said Malyshev. “There are two questions here. The first is, what use are the stars?”
“Right, what?” asked Panin.
“The second question is, granting that they do have some use, can we exploit it in the present generation? Right?”
“Right,” said Panin. He was not smiling any longer, and he looked steadily at Sergei. Sergei remained silent.
“I’ll answer the first question,” said Malyshev. “Do you want to know what’s going on in the system of UV Ceti?”
“All right, I want to,” said Panin. “What of it?”
“Well, I myself want to very much. And if I go on wanting for my whole life, and if I go on trying to find out, then before my death—untimely, I hope—I will thank the nonexistent God for creating the stars and filling up my life.”
“Ah!” said Gurgenidze. “How beautiful!”
“You see,” said Malyshev, “we’re talking about human beings.”
“So?” asked Panin, turning red.
“That’s all,” said Malyshev. “First a creature said, ‘I want to eat.’ He wasn’t yet human at that point. But then he said ‘I want to know.’ Then he was a human being.”
“This human being of yours,” Panin said angrily, “still has no clear idea of what’s under his feet, and he’s already snatching at the stars.”
“That’s why he’s a human being,” Malyshev answered. “That’s the way he is. Look, don’t go against the laws of nature. It doesn’t depend on you. There’s a law: the aspiration to find out in order to live inevitably turns into the aspiration to live in order to find out. You, you’re just afraid of acceleration.”
“All right,” said Panin. “So I’ll become a teacher. I’ll plumb the depths of children’s souls for the sake of everyone. But for whose sake are you going to find out about the stars?”
“That’s the second question,” Malyshev began, but here Gurgenidze jumped up and started yelling, with eyes flashing, “You want to wait until they invent your trimpazation? So wait! I don’t want to wait! I’m going to the stars!”
“Bah,” said Panin. “Quiet down.”
“Don’t worry,” Sergei said without raising his eyes. “They won’t send you on a starship.”
“And why not?” inquired Panin,
“Who needs you?” shouted Gurgenidze. “Go sit on the Moon run!”
“They’ll pity your youth,” said Sergei. “As for whose sake will we find out about the stars… for our own, for everyone’s. Even for yours. But you won’t take part in it. You’ll make your discoveries in the newspapers. You’re afraid of acceleration.”
“Hold on, guys,” Malyshev said anxiously. “This is a purely theoretical discussion.”
But Sergei knew that another moment and he would start swearing and would try to prove that he wasn’t a jock. He got up and quickly left the dining hall.
“Had enough?” Gurgenidze said to Panin.
“Well,” said Panin, “in a situation like this, in order to remain a human being, you’ve got to act like an animal.”
He grabbed Gurgenidze by the neck and bent him in two. There no longer was anyone in the dining hall, except for the three aces from the Command Division, who were clinking glasses of tomato juice by the counter. They were drinking to Liakhov, to Interstellar One.
Sergei Kondratev went straight to the videophone. First I’ve got to straighten things out, he thought. Katya first. Oh, what a mess it’s all turned out to be! Poor Katya. Poor me, for that matter.
He took the receiver off the cradle and stopped, trying to remember the number for Katya’s room. And suddenly he dialed the number for Valentin Petrov. Until the last moment he was thinking about how he had to talk with Katya right away, so he was silent for a second or two, looking at the lean face of Petrov which had appeared on the screen. Petrov too was silent, arching his sparse eyebrows. Sergei said, “Are you busy?”
“Not particularly,” said Petrov.
“I have something to talk about. I’ll come over right away.”
“Do you need Volume Seven?” Petrov said, squinting. “Come on over. I’ll call someone else. Maybe we should invite Kan?”
“No,” said Sergei. “It’s too early. Just ourselves for now.”
Part Two: Homecoming
3. Old-timer
When his assistant returned, the traffic controller was standing as before in front of the screen, with his head bent and his arms thrust into his pockets almost up to the elbows. A bright white dot was crawling slowly within the depths of the coordinate-gridded screen.
“Where is he now?” the assistant asked.
The controller did not turn around. “Over Africa,” he growled. “At nine megameters.”
“Nine—” said the assistant. “And the velocity?”
“Almost circular.” The controller turned around. “Well, what do you think? And what else is out there?”
“You’d better calm down,” said the assistant. “What can you do from here?… He grazed the Big Mirror.”
The controller exhaled noisily and, without taking his hands out of his pockets, sat down on the arm of a chair. “Madman,” he muttered.
“So what’s gotten you so worked up?” the assistant asked uncertainly. “Something’s happened. His controls are malfunctioning.”
They fell silent. The white dot kept crawling, cutting slantwise across the screen.
“Where did he get the gall to enter the station zone with malfunctioning controls?” the controller said. “And why doesn’t he give his call sign?”
“He is transmitting something.”
“It’s not a call sign—it’s gibberish.”
“It’s still a call sign,” the assistant said quietly. “All the same, it’s on a fixed frequency.”
“‘Frequency, frequency,’” the controller said through his teeth.
The assistant bent toward the screen, peering myopically at the figures on the coordinate grid. Then he looked at the clock and said, “He’s passing Station Gamma now. Let’s see who it is.”
The controller laughed gloomily. What else can I do? he thought. I think we’ve done everything we can. All flights have been stopped. All touchdowns have been forbidden. All near-Earth stations have been alerted. Turnen is getting the emergency robots ready.
The controller fumbled at the microphone on his chest and said, “Turnen, what’s happening with the robots?”
Turnen answered unhurriedly: “I’m planning on launching the robots in five or six minutes. After they’re launched, I’ll tell you more.”
“Turnen,” said the controller, “I’m begging you, don’t dawdle—hurry it up a little.”
“I never dawdle,” Turnen answered with dignity. “But it’s senseless to hurry when you don’t have to. I will not delay takeoff by one extra second.”
“Please, Turnen,” said the controller, “please.”
“Station Gamma,” said the assistant. “I’m giving maximum magnification.”
The screen blinked, and the coordinate grid disappeared. In the black emptiness appeared a strange construction like a distorted garden summerhouse with absurdly massive columns. The controller gave a drawn-out whistle and jumped up. This was the last thing he had expected. “A nuclear rocket!” he shouted in astonishment. “How? From where?”
“Ye-es,” the assistant said indecisively. “Really… can’t understand it…”
The incredible structure, with its five fat pillarlike tubes sticking out from under a dome, was slowly turning. A violet radiance trembled under the dome—the pillars looked black against its background. The controller slowly lowered himself down onto the arm of the chair. Of course—it was a nuclear rocket, an interplanetary ship. Photon drive, two-layer parabolic reflector of mesomatter, hydrogen engines. A century and a half ago there had been many such ships. They had been built for the conquest of the planets. Solid, leisurely machines with a fivefold safety margin. They had se
rved long and well, but the last of them had been scrapped long ago—long, long ago.
“Really…” muttered the assistant. “Amazing! Where have I seen something like that?… Greenhouses!” he shouted.
From left to right, a wide gray shadow quickly crossed the screen. “Greenhouses,” the assistant whispered.
The controller narrowed his eyes. A thousand metric tons, he thought. A thousand tons and speed like that… To bits… to dust… the robots! Where the hell are the robots?
The assistant said hoarsely, “He got through… Can it really be? He got through!”
The controller opened his eyes wide again. “Where are the robots?” he yelled.
A green light flared up on the selector board by the wall, and a calm male voice said, “This is D-P. Slavin calling Main Control. Request permission for touchdown at Base Pi-X Seventeen.”
The controller, flushing red, started to open his mouth, but did not make it. Several voices at once thundered through the hall:
“Go back!”
“D-P, permission denied.”
“Captain Slavin, go back!”
“Captain Slavin, this is Main Control. Immediately assume any orbit in Zone Four. Do not touch down. Do not approach. Wait.”
“Roger, wilco,” Slavin responded in confusion. “Enter Zone Four and wait.”
The controller, suddenly remembering, closed his mouth. He could hear a woman’s voice at the selector board, arguing with someone, “Explain to him what’s going on. Explain it, for pity’s sake.” Then the green light on the selector board went out again, and all the noise ceased.
The display on the screen faded. Once again the coordinate grid appeared, and once again a bright glimmering spark crawled within the depths of the screen.
Turnen’s voice rang out: “Emergency officer to control. The robots have launched.”
At the same second, in the lower right corner of the screen appeared two more bright points. The controller rubbed his hands nervously, as though he felt chilly. “Thank you, Turnen,” he muttered. “Thank you very much.”
The two bright dots—the emergency robots—crawled across the screen. The distance between them and the nuclear craft gradually decreased.