Some of us missed tobacco. I didn't -- I had been a smoker, but I saw
so clearly before the trip started that living was more important than
smoking that I hardly thought of it after that. Not smoking was part of
life on the lifeship, like the weightlessness.
Exercise wasn't missed as much as we'd have thought. You don't need as much
exercise when you can relax utterly, and we all learned that. We became
capable of floating so limply in the air that a mere hint of a draft
would roll us over, bend our limbs, wag our heads. Relaxation like that
just isn't possible when gravity is present.
For the exercise that was necessary we instituted a sort of sports day
that was held regularly. The purpose wasn't competition, it was primarily
to use muscles that otherwise wouldn't be used at all. The sports became
more complicated every time as we adapted ourselves more and more to
the conditions.
There was Four-five-bump, for example. You had to start out from one wall,
touching five walls with left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot,
and head, and bumping on the last with what Harry Phillips called your
Sunday face. The whole thing was timed, and the winner was the person who
could do it most quickly. The usual winner was Bessie, presumably because
she was the most adaptable among us. None of the rest of us could get
the trick of doing the whole thing as a concerted action the way she did.
There was the arm race, a race across the lounge without a push-off,
using only the arms to propel you through the air. Again strength
didn't count. It was Miss Wallace who made the best use of arms and air
resistance, pulling herself rapidly along with slow, strong strokes.
There was wrestling, in which a fall was a touch against any wall. Sammy
and I would wrestle, then Leslie and Miss Wallace, Betty and Jim, and so on
until we all ganged up on Bessie, to her delight.
I think generally we must have been one of the happiest lifeship crews
among the seven hundred thousand. And it made me proud, for I felt I
had chosen well. Only after Morgan Smith's name was there any sort of
question mark.
As we were nearing Mars Stowe married Miss Wallace. The rest of us were
faintly surprised, but realized when we thought about it that it was
a good thing. Stowe was a little defiant, in case anyone suspected he
had forgotten Mary, or that she hadn't meant much to him. But I think
we all knew better. After all, it was a long time since Mary died.
Miss Wallace was really rather young for Stowe, but she didn't look it.
We had always called her Miss Wallace; now, when she became Mrs. Stowe,
we began to call her Caroline. It was only then that we learned her
first name.
Her marriage was no more formal than those of Betty and Morgan, Leslie
and me. But one automatically made the change and thought of her as
Mrs. Stowe. That wasn't the case with the rest of us. Betty was just
Betty, and I had never thought of Leslie as Mrs. Easson. If this casual
marriage became common, I could see the custom of the woman taking the
man's name dying out altogether. Miss Wallace wanted to be Mrs. Stowe,
but Betty preferred to remain Betty Glessor, and Leslie, when she once
signed her name in the log, signed it "Leslie Darby."
"Now I'm left all alone," said Sammy. "Will you marry me, Bessie?"
"Yes," said the child instantly, "if you'll stop looking so black."
8
Mars was big in the forward window now. The first of the three big
questions was already settled.
The three questions were: Would the ship miss Mars? Would it take up an
orbit around it? Would it crash plumb into it? I wanted them settled,
if possible, before I did anything at all.
It was clear that the ship wasn't going to miss Mars. I had been spending
hours in the control room looking at it and wishing I was a better pilot.
Spaceships at best -- I mean the regular spaceships -- can't afford extra
people on board. The crew is always at a minimum. That means that in
emergencies everyone must be able to do someone else's job. As well as
being a radio officer I had been fourth pilot. I had taken up and landed
ships -- big ships, ships they trusted me not to smash. But always I
had an experienced pilot at my side, ready to take over. Always I'd
had painstaking, quadruple-checked calculations on which I could and
did trust the ship and my life and everybody else's life. Always, most
important of all, I'd had plenty of fuel in reserve, so that if I was
at all doubtful I could blast clear and try again.
In those circumstances I wasn't a bad pilot. I had been passed without
hesitation -- indeed, with the utmost confidence -- as a lifeship pilot,
and the question of further training and practice hadn't arisen. After
all, seven hundred thousand pilots had to be found. If any had to be
trained specially for the job, it certainly wasn't the few men who had
actually flown a regular ship, ever.
But I knew that Mart Browne or Colin Mitchell, say, two of the pilots I'd
worked with, would merely glance at the controls of the lifeship and at
Mars and know exactly what they could do and what they couldn't. By feel
they could put the ship in an orbit, with the fuel I had, if that seemed
the best thing to do. And either of them, I felt, could have a healthy
stab at the job of setting the ship down -- again, on the fuel I had.
Some lifeships would be lucky that way. They would have trained,
experienced pilots, and men like that, given half a chance, would do the
almost impossible. Others, perhaps, would be lucky in having in charge
someone who didn't know the difficulties, someone who would come through
without having any idea of the various disasters he'd just missed.
I had the little learning that was a dangerous thing. I knew what could
be done, and I didn't know which of those things I could do and which
I couldn't.
The effect of Mars's gravity wasn't really being felt yet. When it was,
the ship would swing into position to blast against it.
"I don't see any ships coming out to help us," said Sammy, as we looked
at the world that was to be our home or our grave.
"Write that off, Sammy," I said. "Take us as being the average ship.
The average lifeship won't get any help -- only the lucky ones."
"I thought we were supposed to be one of the lucky ones, said Sammy,
with a grin. Sammy was like that -- if others were optimistic, he was
gloomy; if others were gloomy, he was cheerful.
"So we are lucky. Here we are, heading straight for Mars, taken all
the way by three minutes' blast from Earth. That's luck. Nobody could
count on it. But on the other hand, it's not by any means fantastic or
incredible, considering that's precisely what they were planning for
every lifeship, back on Earth, for months. I mean, if you aim for a clay
pipe at a fairground and ring a gold watch, that's blind luck. But if
you aim carefully for the gold watch, and get it, that's -- "
"I get your point. So we're not going to get any help?"
"Doesn't look like it. And it doesn't look at all likely that we're
going to orbit, either. The course was too good. If we were going to
miss Mars we might be captured by it -- but we're not."
"That leaves us to try for orbit or landing. Which is it going to be?"
"Landing," I said promptly.
Sammy raised his eyebrows. "Isn't the other the better chance?"
"Yes. But if we fail to orbit, we lose the chance to try to land soft.
If we try to land . . . well, we certainly land. Depends how hard,
that's all."
I had thought there would be all sorts of last-minute things to do,
things to clear up. But I found myself suddenly, without warning,
talking to everyone in the lounge and telling them the trip was over
bar the question of success or failure.
"I never told you why I slammed on the acceleration when we were coming
unstuck," I said, and there was sudden attention that I hadn't quite had
until then. When I began to speak, they probably thought it was just
Bill talking to them, not Lieutenant Easson. "I saw we weren't going
to have enough fuel, and I tried to save some. You knew when Jim went
to that other ship that he was looking for fuel, but I didn't say then
that under no circumstances could the fuel I had land us safely on Mars."
"We guessed that, son," said Harry. "Bad news travels fast. I think we all
knew. But thanks all the same. It was a nice thought."
I looked around at them. Yes, nobody seemed surprised. Betty was clutching
Morgan tightly, as though, if they were close enough together, nothing
could harm them. Leslie was playing with Bessie, and though I knew she was
listening intently to what was going on, she showed no sign of it. Stowe
nodded slowly, and clasped Caroline's hand. Jim couldn't help looking
rather disappointed that everyone knew what he had been carefully guarding
as a secret.
"Well, that saves a lot of trouble," I said briskly. "All right, get
strapped up now and into your couches and be patient. I'm going to wait
until I think the time's right, and then blast with all we've got in
the way that gives us the best chance."
I looked at them intently. "It'll be cruel," I warned them. "Far worse
than when we left Earth. You'll feel the floor's trying to push its way
right through you. Don't think you have to bear it silently. Scream all
you like -- it'll help."
"How many Gs will it be, Lieutenant Bill?" asked Jim, interested.
"I don't know, Jim. I'll tell you this -- it'll be more than the human
frame is supposed to be able to stand. But that's something that's been
put up time and again. Let's see if we can put it up once more. People
who traveled at twelve miles an hour didn't have their heads blown off,
remember."
"Will the linings stand it?" Jim asked.
I made a face at him. "Think about that after we land, Jim," I told him.
"Just at the moment, please keep that and any other interesting questions
to yourself."
"How long have we got?" asked Sammy.
"Plenty of time, I suppose, but better start strapping each other up now.
There may not be as much time as I think."
Imprex was developed primarily for this job. It's a binding tape that
sticks only to itself, easily torn off when there's no strain, and
stronger and stronger as the strain is put on it. It's elastic and
equalizes the strain against it throughout its length. For support
against acceleration or deceleration, it's better than anything else.
I waited in the control room while Leslie helped the others, then came
back to strap her up myself. That was the only time on the trip that
Leslie got special consideration from me. I wanted to be sure that she
was as well prepared to stand the deceleration as she could be.
She wanted to be with me in the control room, but we couldn't shift
her couch in there. I taped her very carefully, probing delicately at
the imprex and taking it off again if it was a fraction too tight or
too loose.
"None of the others are done as carefully as this," Leslie whispered.
"Shouldn't I . . . ?"
"It won't make all that difference," I said. "But while I've got a certain
responsibility to you all, I feel I have a special responsibility for
my wife."
Now I couldn't see Mars any more. It was beneath our jets as the ship
dropped. I was letting it drop.
Mars had an air pressure of between six and seven pounds -- quite enough
for life on a world that called for little effort. Since there wasn't any
air until much nearer the surface, my altimeter was useless. I didn't know,
couldn't know, exactly where we were in relation to Mars. My calculations
were based on a constant speed, and checked by Phobos and Deimos, which
I could see.
I had known all along that it was liable to be like this -- blasting for
a short time, too little, too late. There had been dramatic last-minute
rescue. None of us had been able to construct a superdrive out of the
sole of a shoe and a couple of hairpins. We didn't, unfortunately, carry
an amateur Einstein who was able to work out on the back of an envelope
a way of landing safely without using any fuel at all.
Far from all this, what it came to in the end was that I sat with my hand
poised over the firing button, waiting till it felt right to close it.
I've known men who trusted their lives to their instinct for the right
moment. They did it because they had found it paid off. I only did it
because I had to.
Now, I thought, and closed the switch. There was no sound. There was
nothing outside for the blast to thunder against.
But I didn't miss sound in the welter of tortured vision, crushing gravity,
drumming in my brain, and shooting pains. It was much worse than I had
expected, worse than I had been able to imagine. My teeth ached, there
was a fire in my belly, someone seemed to be tearing my skin off with
pincers. There were sensations that I couldn't explain afterward.